The St. Aubyn mineral collection (c.1794-2010) at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery

Abstract

Sir John St. Aubyn (1758-1839) was a collector and a facilitator to science and the arts. His particular interest was for mineralogy and this lead him to create a sizeable mineral collection containing many interesting specimens. Some of these have been collected in the field by Sir John St. Aubyn, but most of the specimens have been bought from dealers or as whole collections in auction rooms. We know that St. Aubyn bought a proportion of John Stuart's, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713-1792) mineral collection from Dr. William Babington (1756-1833) in 1799. He also purchased a smaller mineral collection from the son of Richard Greene� (1716-1793) in the same year. Richard Greene is an important man to all of us, because he opened the first public museum in England. He was also a good friend of Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). Before his death, Sir John St. Aubyn employed Isaiah Deck of Cambridge to auction his mineral collection. In 1834, Isaiah split the collection and gave two smaller collections to Sir John's wife Juliana and to his daughter Mrs. Parnell. Then a larger collection went to the Civil Military Library at Devonport. Luckily parts of the original collection still exist today in Saffron Walden Museum and in Plymouth City Museum. The minerals that are now in Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery (PCMAG) came to the museum in 1924, on a permanent loan from Devonport. In 2007, PCMAG secured a grant from the Esm�e Fairbairn Foundation, enabling the museum's natural history department to conduct a variety of work on this historic collection. In the following article, I will recount my journey through time as I removed centuries of dust to reveal a collection of scientific and cultural importance.