Glass Cabinets and Little Black Boxes: The Collections of H. H. Wilder and the Curious Case of His Human-Hair Samples

Abstract

Harris Hawthorne Wilder, a professor of zoology at Smith College, was trained in anatomy and physical anthropology in Germany at the end of the 19th century. He taught at Smith College, a private liberal-arts college for women, from 1892 to 1927. Not unusual for the times, his interests in archaeology and anthropology were very broad. He excavated sites in what can be considered, at best, dubious ethical circumstances and created a wide-ranging collection of artifacts, human remains, and anatomical specimens. One of the more curious collections was of human-hair samples, which included “specimens” from students at Smith College, his own family members, and a small subcategory he referred to as “ethnics.” We chart his proclivity for collecting many items of an anatomical, archaeological, or anthropological nature, and focus on his human-hair samples to contextualize the nature of these collections in terms of late 19th- and early 20th-century views on race, ethnicity, and gender in anthropology. We take the position that to understand this collection more fully it is essential to know the life and times of its collector, including his role in the academic history of the Connecticut Valley, and we suggest that Wilder himself was conflicted as to its meaning and purpose.