The Massachusetts State Cabinet Herbarium Revisited and Revitalized: A Collection of New England Plants From the Early 19th Century

Abstract

Abstract In 1867, the State Cabinet, an extensive collection of specimens representing the natural history of Massachusetts, was transferred from the State House in Boston, MA, to the new Massachusetts Agricultural College in Amherst (now the University of Massachusetts). The botanical portion of the State Cabinet has remained intact, and relatively unknown, for the last 148 years at the University of Massachusetts Herbarium. Over the course of two years we completely curated the collection, performed restoration work, and researched the history of the collectors associated with the State Cabinet with a goal of making the collection available online. We were able to assign collectors and collection dates to 84% of the collections that were missing this information. The primary collectors, Charles Jarvis (1800–1826), Edward Jarvis (1803–1884), and Henry Little (1802–1826), were a group of Harvard-educated physicians whose botanical interests were probably inspired by the instruction they received in natura...