CDV of Martha Ann Maxwell Female Taxidermist, American Naturalist, and Pioneer

CDV of Martha Ann Maxwell (1831-1881), an American naturalist, artist, and pioneering taxidermist who created influential natural history dioramas.
 
Born on July 21, 1831, Martha Ann Dartt lived in Pennsylvania until she was sixteen when the family moved to Baraboo, Wisconsin. After attending only a year of college at Oberlin College in Ohio due to a shortage of funds, she returned to Wisconsin in 1852 to teach school. In exchange for tuition and living expenses to continue her education, Martha accompanied the two oldest children of widower James A. Maxwell to Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. On March 20, 1854 they married. James was 20 years older than Martha and had six children. In less than two months Martha’s commitment to the temperance movement was evidenced when she was arrested, fined, and set free following her complicity in a raid on the Brick Tavern. Many bottles were drained in what was called the Whiskey War of 1854.
Following the financial crash of 1857 and the birth of their daughter Mabel on November 17, the Maxwells lost their fortune. This along with the lure of gold in the Rocky Mountains and the spring “Rush to the Rockies” in 1859 by gold seekers prompted the Maxwells to go west. By the spring of 1860, they had arrived in Denver. James took to mining, while Martha ran boardinghouses.
In 1862 Martha returned to Baraboo and to her daughter Mabel, who had been staying with relatives. For the next five years she focused her work in taxidermy and temperance reform being elected secretary of the Loyal Women’s League of Baraboo. By September 1866 suffering from poor health, Martha entered the sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan and remained there until the spring of 1867 when she returned to Baraboo. Shortly, she moved with Mabel to Vineland, New Jersey, a temperance community founded on idealistic and visionary principles. But, estranged husband James coerced Martha back to Boulder, Colorado. Martha began collecting and preparing specimens in a feverish way. At first relying primarily on boys in the neighborhood for specimens, Maxwell obtained a gun, practiced her marksmanship, and began a series of collecting trips into the mountains. By September 1868, Martha had gathered 600 specimens and had taken them to the Third Annual Exposition of the Colorado Agricultural Society held at the Denver fair grounds. Governor Alexander Hunt of Colorado was so impressed with her collection that he asked her to represent Colorado at the St. Louis Fair in 1870. Selling this collection to Shaw’s Gardens for $600 in 1870, she set about over the following months to collect and stuff a new collection.On June 4, 1874, Martha Maxwell opened her own Rocky Mountain Museum which inhabited three rooms on the second floor of the Dabney-Macky block at the corner of Pearl and 12th streets in Boulder. Admission was 25 cents. By the end of 1875, Maxwell had moved the Museum to Denver located in a building situated on Lawrence Street where the Park Central complex is today. The museum proved to be no more of a financial success here than in Boulder.During the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Martha received national recognition and fame for her natural habitat displays and her taxidermic artistry. While the Colorado and Kansas commissioners presented her with an Evans rifle, Martha, following the Exposition, endured financial setbacks and tried to find ways to exhibit and/or sell her collection.Estranged from her husband who remained in Colorado, Martha had moved from Philadelphia to Rockaway Beach, New York, by 1880. While preparing her bathhouse-museum there for the summer months of 1881, a lonely Martha began to suffer physically and emotionally. Her suffering was exacerbated by the cold months of winter and her health declined. Her daughter Mabel, summoned from Colorado, was informed that Martha was dying from an ovarian tumor. Mabel recalled, “Mother was so pitifully glad to see me that it almost broke my heart.” In the early morning of May 31, 1881, Martha Maxwell died in her daughter’s arms.