December 31, 1838

English-born naturalist Philip Henry Gosse left Alabama after an eight-month stay in the Black Belt. One of the best-known zoologists in Europe, Gosse traveled to Alabama to collect fossil shells in Claiborne, but instead accepted a teaching job in Pleasant Hill, Dallas County. While in Pleasant Hill, he carefully recorded his observations of plant and animal life, plantation life and the common events in the lives of people. He published those observations in a series of articles in the English magazine “The Home Friend” in 1855 and in book form as “Letters from Alabama” in 1859, complete with engravings made from sketches and watercolors that he produced while in Dallas County.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Philip Henry Gosse with his only child, Edmund William Gosse, in 1857. Edmund Gosse became a celebrated writer and critic, best known for his autobiographical book Father and Son about his relationship with his father.

An illustration from Philip Henry Gosse’s Entomologia Alabamensis, an unpublished collection of drawings and sketches of animals and plants, including 48 insects from Alabama. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Auburn University Libraries)

Illustration of British sea-anemone and corals by Philip Henry Gosse, Van voorst, Paternoster Row, London, 1860. (Wikipedia)

Illustration from A naturalist’s sojourn in Jamaica by Philip Henry Gosse and assisted by Richard Hill, 1851. (Wikipedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.