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Chloe Lesley Starks - a request for help from England



The following is posted for Polly Smith who is an the Assistant Archivist at The Natural History Museum (London). She is not a member of this august body so please send any replies to P.Smith@nhm.ac.uk

PeterK
+++++++++++++++
I am the Assistant Archivist at The Natural History Museum, London, in need
of some help from my American colleagues. I am trying to find out anything
that I can on Chloe Lesley Starks, an American university professor and
sometime zoological artist, probably born in the latter quarter of the
nineteenth century and died c1952. The background to my search requires
some explaining...

Lord Walter Rothschild (1868-1937), of the banking family, assembled the
largest collection of natural history specimens made by one man at his
museum in Tring, Herfordshire, UK. He bequeathed the museum building and
its contents to The Natural History Museum, and it duly became part of us
in 1937.

As a result, here in the Museum Archives we have a large collection of letters written to Rothschild and his two curators, Karl Jordan and Ernst Hartert. Amongst this collection is an invoice dated September 1899 from Chloe Lesley Starks, 'University of Washington, Seattle, formerly of Washington DC', for some paintings of a Galapagos
tortoise skeleton done in 1898. (Rothschild was very interested in the Galapagos tortoises.)

I recently found these very paintings, previously unidentified, in our archives, and this has set me off on a hunt for information about Chloe and why Rothschild would commission someone on the north west coast of America to do these paintings for him.

What I know so far is that Chloe was at Stanford from 1893 to about 1897
(as Chloe Frances Lesley), when she married Edwin Chapin Starks, the
icthyologist (1867-1932). Edwin then got a job at the US Biological Survey
in Washington DC, and in September 1898 wrote to Rothschild to apply for a
job at the Tring Museum. In this letter he mentions that his wife had
lately done some drawings for him [Rothschild], which would suggest that
Rothschild had been in touch with her separately via another source. His
application failed and the couple moved to Seattle, presumably early 1899,
where Edwin became Curator of the Museum and Assistant Professor of Zoology.

In 1899, Chloe was appointed a professor of Education at Stanford, and a
directory of 1931 lists her as associate professor of Education (graphic
art). She retired in 1932. In 1900, Edwin had also joined the faculty, and
by 1932 their daughter Dorothy was on the faculty of Stanford Medical School.

And that is all I have. Being in England places me at somewhat of a
disadvantage, so I am reliant on the goodwill of American archivists to
find out what they can for me in their archives. There is some confusion
over the years 1898-1900 as to where Chloe was at any one time, and there
is no obvious explanation of the Rothschild connection. So any information
(including when she was born, and even information on her husband and
daughter), or suggestions as to whom I might contact, would be very
gratefully received.

I can be contacted by email at <p.smith@nhm.ac.uk>.

Many thanks in anticipation,
Polly Smith
Assistant Archivist
The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road,London SW7 5BD, UK