Alfred russel wallace meuseums11/25/2023 ![]() ![]() It was probably in this library that he first met amateur naturalist Henry Walter Bates, who soon got Wallace passionate about collecting and studying beetles. ![]() Leicester had a good library, and there he was able to find and study several important works on natural history. Wallace decided to apply for a position at the Collegiate School in Leicester, and was hired as a master to teach drafting, surveying, English, and arithmetic. In late 1843 a slump in surveying work forced William to let his brother go. Watercolour painting of Neath, Wales, by Wallace's brother William c. He bought his first books on how to identify them and also began to collect them, forming a collection of pressed specimens. It started because he wanted to be able to identify the plants he saw in the countryside while out surveying. In the autumn of 1841 the Wallace brothers moved to the Neath area of Wales and it was there that Alfred's interest in natural history really began. Wallace and his brother would do such work for the next six and a half years, roaming all over the countryside of southern England and Wales. William owned a land-surveying business, and he was to learn the trade. A portrait of the founder, Richard Hale, can be seen above theĭoor on the left. Copyright Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies (Photo: Mr Elsden).īy mid 1837 Alfred had left London to join his eldest brother, William, in Bedfordshire. 1900, showing the single long room in which all the The interior of the Old Grammar School c. Hertford Grammar School (from a watercolour by Eliza Dobinson c. Wallace was forced to leave school in March 1837, when he was only 14 and was sent to London to lodge with his older brother John who was a carpenter. In about 1835 Wallace's father was swindled out of his remaining assets and the family fell on very hard times. In 1828 when Wallace was five, he and his family moved to Hertford and it was there, at Hertford Grammar School, that he received his only formal education. His great grandfather on his mother's side was twice Mayor of Hertford (in 17). Wallace's father was of Scottish descent (reputedly, of a line leading back to the famous William Wallace) whilst the Greenells were a respectable Hertford family. Wallace was the eighth of nine children, three of whom did not survive to adulthood. BeccaloniĪlfred Russel Wallace was born in Kensington Cottage near Usk, Monmouthshire, England (now part of Wales) on the 8th of January 1823 to Thomas Vere Wallace and Mary Ann Wallace ( née Greenell), a downwardly mobile middle-class English couple who had moved there from London a few years earlier in order to reduce their living costs. Click here for a timeline of places and houses where Wallace lived ![]()
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