Edward W. Nelson - Alaska, April 12 - May 23, 1877

"One of the keenest naturalist we have ever had," Theodore Roosevelt once said of Edward Willian Nelson (1855-1934). In 1876, the Smithsonian's Assistant Secretary Spencer F. Baird, arranged for Nelson to be attached to the United States Army Signal Corps as a weather observer stationed on the Bering Strait. For four uninterrupted years, Nelson observed much more than the weather. As a field naturalist, he collected and sent to the Smithsonian over 10,000 ethnographic objects and even more natural history specimens. He learned the Yu'pik language. And he documented to an exacting detail each of these things, recording them in his field diaries. Please help us transcribe this first field book and see firsthand how his detailed work transformed Americans ideas about the region and its people. You can learn more about his life and work in Alaska and Mexico through his collection of personal papers at the Smithsonian Institution Archives in Record Unit 007364 "Edward William Nelson and Edward Alphonso Goldman Collection."