Frank Bradley Armstrong

Frank Armstrong was born in St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada, and later resettled in Medford and Boston, Massachusetts. He studied taxidermy with C.J. Maynard, author of the Manual of Taxidermy (1883).

In the mid-1880s, he began to tour the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico, based out of Laredo, collecting birds and animals. In 1890, he moved to Brownsville, where he studied subtropical bird life, managed a taxidermy studio (F.B. Wild Animal Company), and kept the “Snake Farm” along with an exhibit of more than 800 mounted birds, fish and animals.

He is remembered also for the thousands of stuffed specimens and bird skins shipped to public collections (including the Field Museum and Smithsonian Institution), as well as live creatures sent to zoos in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., and those provided for the “Government Bird Cage”, a 228′-long aviary featured at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. His studies and collecting helped lay the groundwork for understanding wildlife range and diversity in south Texas.