Herbert Eugene Walter papers (MS.1UF.W1)

Biographical/Historical note

Herbert Eugene Walter (1867-1945), was born in Burke, Vermont, on April 19, 1867 to Augustus Porter Walter (d. 1872) and Betsie Ann “Marmie” Brockway. He attended Lyndon Institute, a secondary boarding school, in Lyndon Center, Vermont. Walter graduated from Bates College in 1892, and was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s biology program. He studied for one summer at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratories, becoming a mentee of Professor Hermon Carey Bumpus, who brought him to Brown University. After he received his M. A. degree from Brown in 1893, Walter studied for a year at the University of Freiburg in 1893-1894. From 1894 to 1904, he taught high school biology in Chicago. After a semester leave from his high school teaching position to study briefly in Germany, he went to Harvard to obtain his Ph.D., which was awarded in 1906. That same year, he became a professor of biology at Brown University and worked at Brown until his retirement in 1937. He also worked at the Cold Spring Harbor biology laboratory in Cold Spring, NY every summer from 1905-1928 and served as the assistant director during 1917-1926.

Walter published several books, including: Studies in Animal Life (1900), Genetics: An Introduction to the Study of Heredity (1913), The Human Skeleton (1913), and Biology of the Vertebrates (1928).

Walter married Alice Evangeline Hall on August 25, 1896. They co-wrote Wild Birds in City Parks the first edition of which was published in 1901 and the fifth edition in 1910. They had no children.

Genealogy of the Walter family:

• Augustus Walter married Abigail Porter. They had one son that lived to maturity: Porter Walter (1805-1881)
• Porter Walter married Charlotte Cahoon Blake. They had 2 sons: Augustus Porter Walter and True Blake Walter (died during Civil War)
• Augustus Porter Walter (d. 1872) married Betsie Ann “Marmie” Brockway. They had 2 sons: Charles True Walter (b. 1863) and Herbert Eugene Walter (1867-1945). Bestie Ann Walter married her second husband, Mr. Isaace D.Bemis, in 1887.
• Charles True Walter married Mabel Hall.
• Herbert Eugene Walter married Alice Evangeline Hall (sister of Mabel) on August 25, 1896. They had no children.