Harvard University. Board of Visitors of the Massachusetts Professorship of Natural History.

In January 1830 the Board of Visitors of the Massachusetts Professorship of Natural History informed the Harvard Corporation that efforts to secure additional funding for the Professorship and botanic garden had been unsuccessful and that the best interests of the garden would be served if control was given to the Corporation.

The Massachusetts Professorship of Natural History, along with a botanic garden, was endowed in 1805 by a group of prominent Massachusetts citizens to promote commerce, agriculture, medicine and the arts through the study of zoology, botany, and mineralogy. A Board of Visitors for the professorship was organized to supervise the activities of the natural history professor and to support the garden. After the death of the Professorship's first and only incumbent, William Dandridge Peck (1763-1822) in October 1822, the Board found it difficult to financially support both the professorship and the botanic garden. Since funds were no longer available to support a professor, the Board assigned the care of the garden to Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859); efforts to secure funding for the Natural History professorship were not successful and the chair was left vacant. In 1862, the Corporation united the Massachusetts Professorship of Natural History and the Fisher Professorship of Natural History (established in 1834) since both professorships served similar purposes. The botanic garden, which had languished over the years as an instructional laboratory, was finally abandoned in 1948 when the Botanic Garden Apartments were erected on the grounds.

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