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Volume CXXXIII, Number 3 |
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Exploring the North
KATHRYN OSTROFSKY
STAFF WRITER
Of the three Bowdoin men who were crew members on the Nautilus, two were recent graduates: Walter Stone Poor of Fryeburg, Maine, and Simeon Adams Evans, a native of Andover, Massachusetts. During their years at Bowdoin, both men were in the Athenian Society. A year after the Greenland expedition, Poor enlisted with the 10th New York Volunteers and in 1862 became first a lieutenant and then a captain with the 1st New York Mounted Rifles. In 1864 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and stationed in the 2nd North Carolina Volunteers. He continued to serve out the rest of the war as a U.S. Provost Marshall in New Berne, North Carolina. After the war he studied law in New York City and later moved to Morristown, New Jersey where he lived until his death in 1906.
Evans, too, joined the Union Army in 1861, serving as Hospital Steward for the 13th Maine Volunteers and in 1863 as an Assistant Surgeon for the 14th Maine Volunteers. He returned to Brunswick following his service in the war to earn his M.D. at the Medical School of Maine in 1865. He progressed to become a physician in Hopington, New Hampshire, and lived in the nearby town of Conway until his death in 1895.
However, at the time of the expedition to Greenland, neither Evans or his two Chi Psi fraternity brothers were yet soliders. One of these fraternity brothers was Thomas Worcester Hyde, '61, later a major in the 7th Maine Volunteers and known for his courage at the Battle of Antietam. The other was Samuel Fessenden '61, a staff officer mortally wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run, in August, 1862. (Thomas W. Hyde and William Pitt Fessenden '23-Sam Fessenden's father, then president of Bowdoin's Alumni Association and United States Senator from Maine-were highlighted in a series written by Kid Wongsrichanalai '03 that appeared in the '01-'02 Orient.)
The other Bowdoin man on the Greenland expedition was a rising senior
by the name of Alpheus Spring Packard Jr. Packard was born to true Bowdoin
parents; his father was Professor Packard who taught Latin and Greek at
Bowdoin from 1824 to 1865, and his mother was Francis Elizabeth Appleton,
daughter of former Bowdoin President Jesse Appleton. Alpheus Jr. spent
his childhood in Brunswick. (Note: Another of Jesse Appleton's daughters
married Franklin Pierce, which means the U.S. President was Alpheus Jr.'s
uncle by marriage.) Alpheus Jr. grew up in the Packard wing of the Packard-Smyth
House, now the John Brown Russworm House.
Alpheus's childhood diary provides clues as to how this young man became
interested in Natural History, which later led to his Greenland expedition.
Alpheus was born with a cleft palate which, though partially corrected
by an operation, still affected his speech. Instead of concentrating on
his speaking skills, the young boy turned to books.
At age fifteen, Alpheus, like so many other boys at that time, collected shells, rocks, and other small treasures and curiosities. His Aunt Mary Tucker gave him the bone from a swordfish nose, and Miss Ann Jackson gave him rocks from Mammoth Cave and a chip off Plymouth Rock. Additionally, Miss Jackson let him borrow a book containing illustrations of shells so the young Alpheus could identify the specimens of his collection. He then spread his research to Professor Parker Cleaveland's cabinet and to the local town library. Alpheus made a cabinet to display all his small natural wonders, and his interest in collecting more specimens, identifying them, and learning about them was the first step toward his fascination with natural history and natural science.
Little did he know that in a few short years, he would be living the
dream that he wrote of in his diary in an entry dated Febuary 5, 1856:
"I have read a good deal today in my naturalist's library. Oh, that
I could wander around the world to collect specimens of Natural History!
It seems to me that if I could know all about Botany, Mineralogy, Geology
and Conchology and know how to stuff animals and birds, and to preserve
insects and keep shells that nothing would be more pleasant provided I
had the finances."
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