Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Moses, Allan
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1881-1953
History
Allan Leopold Moses (1881-1953), a naturalist born in New Brunswick, spent most of his life on Grand Manan Island. His father and grandfather were also naturalists and collected bird specimens as a secondary occupation, while Allan Moses gave his full time to the world of nature. He built a collection of more than 300 mounted birds in addition to supplying specimens to several museums in the United States.
Mr. Moses went on two museum expeditions: the first, for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to the South Atlantic, 1923-1926, where he was an assistant taxidermist; the second, for the American Museum of Natural History (New York) to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and the Belgian Congo in 1928-1929, on which he was the only scientist and taxidermist.
Conservation was a life-long interest of Allan Moses. He was active in the programs of the Grand Manan Branch of the New Brunswick Fish and Game Protective Association and of the Maine Audubon Society. In 1930 he was instrumental in convincing Mr. Stirling Rockefeller to purchase Kent Island and turn it into a bird sanctuary for the preservation of the endangered eider ducks that nested there. In 1936, Kent Island was turned over to Bowdoin College, Maine, for use as a research station. It is still in operation in 2013.
In 1951, Mr. Moses presented his collection of mounted birds from the Bay of Fundy, along with those of his father and grandfather, as "A gift to all present and future students of natural history", to be maintained as the Moses Memorial Museum.