Job Bicknell Ellis Papers (PP)

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Biography of Job Bicknell Ellis

Job Bicknell Ellis (1829-1905) was an American mycologist best known for his work as a collector and classifier of fungi, primarily pyrenomycetes. Ellis was born in Potsdam, New York 21 January 1829. He graduated from Union College in Schenectady, NY (1849) and began an erratic career as a classics teacher and farmer in New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Having no formal training as a botanist or mycologist, he progressively took up mycological fieldwork and dedicated his life to the collection and exchange of dried specimens (exsiccati), creating reference collections sold in sets of one hundred. The most important of these so-called "centuries" of specimens are Fungi Nova-Caesareenses [sic] (Fungi of New Jersey) (1878) and the North American Fungi issued in series from 1878 to 1898.

In 1856 Ellis married Arvilla J. Bacon who became his lifelong assistant and collaborator in assembling duplicate sets of exsiccati. Based in Newfield, New Jersey Ellis maintained a voluminous correspondence with American and European mycologists, a virtual "Who's Who" of 19th century mycology. In 1880 Ellis began to receive financial support from Benjamin Matlock Everhart, a wealthy merchant of Westchester, Pennsylvania. Together they co-authored North American Pyrenomycetes (1892). With William A. Kellerman, Ellis and Everhart founded the Journal of Mycology (1895), a forerunner to Mycologia. Toward the end of his life (1896) Ellis sold his collection of over 100,000 specimens to the NYBG for its Cryptogamic Herbarium. Ellis published over 500 scientific articles. He died 30 December 1905 in Newfield.

Scope and Content

The Job Bicknell Ellis collection consists of correspondence, research papers, catalogues, a hand-sewn pouch of loose notes, and artwork which includes two volumes of watercolor illustrations as well as pen and ink and pencil sketches entitled Figures of North American Fungi, in slip-cased covers. Most of the material relates to the later part of his career (from c. 1880) of collecting and identifying fungi, with representative correspondence from a broad range of mycologists and botanists on specimen exchange and identification.

Restrictions

Access restrictions

This collection is open for research with permission from Mertz Library staff.

Copyright

Requests for permission to publish material from the collection should be submitted in writing to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.

Related Material

Farlow Reference Library, Harvard University

Papers of William Gibson Farlow, 1844-1919

Collection of Botanists Papers, 1855-1946

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Job Bicknell Ellis Papers (PP), Archives, The New York Botanical Garden.

Acquisition Information

This collection was transferred to the New York Botanical Garden Archives.

Processing Information

Originally processed by David Rose, Archives Assistant, June 1999 (revised November 1999)with grant funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH-PA 23141-98) and the Harriet Ford Dickenson Foundation. Converted into EAD in June 2006 by Kathleene Konkle under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH-PA 50678-04).

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