Stewart Henry Burnham

(1870 – 1943)

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium (NCU) curates over 150 fungal specimens collected by Stewart Henry Burnham, who usually signed his labels as “S.H. Burnham”.  All were collected in his home state of New York, many in his hometown of Vaughns.

In 1917 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor William Chambers Coker visited Burnham in New York and together they collected about 20 fungal specimens.  Coker listed the collectors simply as “C & B” on many of these specimens.

In addition to NCU, other herbaria curating specimens collected by Stewart H. Burnham include Cornell University (CU, CUP), Harvard Herbaria (FH), Field Museum (F), New York Botanical Garden (NY), New York State Museum (NYS), Swedish Museum of Natural History (S), Smithsonian Institution (US), University of California at Berkeley (UC), Florida Museum of Natural History (FLAS), University of Michigan (MICH), University of Tennessee, Knoxville (TENN), and Miami University (MU), Canadian National Mycological Herbarium (DAOM), US National Fungal Collection (BPI), Utah State University (UTC), Iowa State University (ISC), Louisiana State University (LSU), Purdue University (PUR, PUL), Oregon State University (OSC), Rutgers University (CHRB), University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbanna (ILL), Illinois Natural History Survey (ILLS), University of Tartu (TU), University of Vermont (VT), University of Wisconsin, Madison (WIS), University of Wyoming (RMS), and U.S. Forest Service, Center for Forest Mycology Research (CFMR).^1,2,3

According to the history of the Cornell University Herbarium website:

“Stewart Henry Burnham was Assistant Curator of the Wiegand Herbarium (CU) from 1922-ca. 1942. He was an extraordinarily thorough natural history collector and record-keeper who specialized in vascular plants, cryptogams, and ornithology.

Burnham was born at Vaughns (near Hudson Falls) in Washington County, New York, on 6 October 1870. After studying in local schools, he attended Stanford University from 1893-1895, then finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, graduating with a B.S. on 22 June 1899. Further studies were undertaken at Cornell University in 1904-1905, concentrating on mycology. Burnham’s professional credits are impressive: Museum Aid at the New York Botanical Garden (1901-1903); Assistant in Botany at Cornell (1904-1905); Assistant State Botanist with Charles H. Peck at the New York State Museum in Albany (1905-1913); Assistant in Botany at Cornell (1920-1922); and Assistant Curator of the Cornell University Herbarium, with Karl M. Wiegand (1922-ca. 1942). Burnham died at Hudson Falls, New York, on 25 September 1943.

Burnham’s breadth of botanical and mycological competence was extraordinary. With Roy Latham, Long Island’s most versatile field naturalist, he co-authored a landmark “Flora of the Town of Southold, Long Island and Gardiner’s Island” that was published in Torreya between 1914 and 1925. This included all the vascular plants, bryophytes, algae, lichens, fungi, and plant galls of this coastal region. Burnham had the professional connections and scientific society affiliations to facilitate identifications by specialists, which enhanced the quality of their catalogue. It remains a model from the period, and is a baseline of information about this region’s entire flora, as well as an important historical document concerning the biota of the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain.

Burnham amassed a huge personal herbarium of ca. 75,000 specimens that was eventually given to Cornell (CU and CUP). His specimens provide an important nucleus of eastern New York material at the Hortorium Herbarium, and include many of Latham’s vouchers from eastern Long Island. Burham published extensively in botany and ornithology; his floristic emphasis was the Lake George Region in eastern New York. Burnham’s extensive personal papers, journals, and correspondence are housed in the Rare and Manuscript Collections (University Archives) of the Kroch Library at Cornell.”⁴

PUBLICATIONS (incomplete list):

Burnham, S. H. (1893). Carices. Bulletin of the Gray Memorial Botanical Chapter of the Agassiz Association, 1(1), 7–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43674127

BURNHAM, S. H. (1894). The Genus Ribes in California. The Asa Gray Bulletin, 2(6), 32–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43666223

BURNHAM, S. H. (1895). Three Well-known Ill-Scented Plants. The Asa Gray Bulletin, 3(8), 2–2. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43673867

BURNHAM, S. H. (1896). Fragrant Wild Flowers of California. The Asa Gray Bulletin, 4(3 (14)), 33–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43676215

BURNHAM, S. H. (1896). October Botanizing. The Asa Gray Bulletin, 4(1 (12)), 4–5. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43673916

Burnham, S. H. (1901). HETEROPHYLLY IN HEPATICA ACUTA. Torreya, 1(6), 65–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40593967

Burnham, S. H. (1901). A FEBRUARY OUTING IN CALIFORNIA. The Plant World, 4(2), 28–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43475855

Burnham, S. H. (1908). A RIBES NEW TO MASSACHUSETTS. Rhodora, 10(119), 205–206. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23295889