James Cushing Merrill

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Merrill earned a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania and became a surgeon in the U.S. Army. During his career he served at posts in Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, New York, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Idaho, as well as Texas.

From February 1876 through June 1878, he was stationed at Fort Brown, where he explored the coastal lagoons, marshes and chaparral of the lower coast, studying insects, beetles, and birds, collecting eggs and preparing “Notes on the Ornithology of Southern Texas” (1878), which became an early authoritative guide to Texas birdlife. His studies are also preserved through bird skins and egg clutches that are held at the Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History and the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, and in correspondence with Robert Ridgway (Smithsonian) and William Brewster (Harvard). His data helped show which species were native, where they nested, and how their populations had fared since frontier days.