The papers of James Moffitt, Curator of Ornithology and Mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences. Includes notes, manuscripts, correspondence, publications, and field note books.

James Moffitt was born in San Francisco on March 21, 1900. His father was a prominent doctor of the time and therefore young Mr. Moffitt attended reputable Bay Area schools, in addition to studying abroad for a time. Mr. Moffitt attended the University of California at Berkeley where he met Joseph Grinnell, the director of the University’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. This relationship would help to solidify Mr. Moffitt’s interest and commitment to the study of ornithology. At the age of seventeen, he was compelled by his powerful patriotism to enlist and serve in World War One. Upon his return, Mr. Moffitt again attended U.C. Berkeley but only for a short period. In 1922, he married Elizabeth Schmiedell and soon was the proud father of a baby girl. He joined the printing firm of Blake, Moffitt, and Towne, of which his grandfather had been a co-founder. This, too, was but a brief endeavor and Mr. Moffitt soon left his office job for the outdoors he loved so much. In 1931 he accepted a position with the California Department of Fish and Game, Bureau of Education and Research. Here he studied and reported on the black brant of California’s bay regions. He also altered the hunting seasons to account for regional differences between deer, not to mention his many reports and papers on California fauna. It was during this time that he devised a manner of tracking grouse by spraying them with dye to study their territorial habits, he thought this concept of painting subjects would catch on in other areas of science, but it didn’t. He also continued to collect during this time, preparing all his own skins. It was once said of his skins, that there were “no finer examples of the art.” In 1934, he resigned from civil service and made the first of three trips back east to visit museums and study their methods of organization, as well as work on his Monograph of North American Geese. He also reinvigorated his study of The Birds of the Tahoe Region. He would not be able to complete either of these during his lifetime. May of 1936 found Mr. Moffitt accepting a position as the Curator of the Departments of Ornithology and Mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences, of which he had been a member since 1919. During his first exciting few years, Mr. Moffitt instituted many of the curatorial ideas he had been exposed to on the east coast, combining them with his own systematic, neat, and meticulous personality. This included rearranging 60,000 specimens in a new, modern, system of organization. Just as he was clearing the way for his Monograph and Tahoe research to continue, Pearl Harbor was bombed and America was drawn into World War Two. Mr. Moffitt’s patriotism once again compelled him to enlist, this time in the Navy Reserve, and shortly after being commissioned was called up for active duty. He was sent to the Aleutian Island area of Alaska where he delighted in taking every chance possible to watch, study and collect the local birds, many of which he had not seen in the wild before. On July 2, 1943, James Moffitt was killed when the Navy transport plane he was a passenger on crashed somewhere along the Aleutian chain. In addition to his seventy-seven published papers, Mr. Moffitt was a member of the American Ornithological Union, Cooper Ornithological Club, British Ornithological Union, Wild Life Society, American Society of Mammals, the Director of the National Audubon Society and a past-president of The Audubon Association of the Pacific.

20 boxes, 4 cu. ft.

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