Death of a Scientist: The Mysterious Demise of Smithsonian Pioneer Robert Kennicott

Robert Kennicott spent a lifetime collecting and analyzing specimens of the natural world, probing and pushing to see what they could reveal about life’s mysteries. Now, as his body lay along the Yukon River’s bank, he was about to become one of them.

It was May 13, 1866, and Kennicott had been missing for hours while the rest of his scientific expedition team ate breakfast. His absence grew more alarming as time passed. When his colleagues became anxious enough, they formed a search party and soon found him dead near the water. He was just 30 years old.

In life, Kennicott’s work provided clarity for the chaos of nature. It was key in laying the foundation for the esteemed Smithsonian Institution. His death posed puzzling questions, few of which could be answered in his lifetime, and it would take dedicated scientists and researchers to provide clarity on the events that led up to his demise in Alaska.

It would also take patience. That closure wouldn’t come for another 150 years.

The Megatherium Club

Robert Kennicott was born in New Orleans on November 13, 1835. While still an infant, his parents, John and Mary, moved to an area just outside of Chicago [PDF]. The lush acreage on the property was curated by John, a physician and horticulturalist, and came to be known as the Grove. It was a place where a person’s fascination with the world could be stimulated, and so it was for the young Kennicott, who began to bend toward nature and science the way a tree surrenders to the wind.

He was a keen student of Dr. Jared Kirtland, a naturalist and friend of the family whom he traveled to see in Cleveland and who helped encourage him to pursue a life in science. As a teen, Kennicott collected specimens to send to the nascent Smithsonian, an education and research combine posthumously founded by James Smithson in 1846. (In his will, he bequeathed all of his money to get the institution up and running.) It soon became a hub for scientists of all types to gather and share knowledge, the thrill of identifying or confirming species running through them like an electric current.

Kennicott knew that rush. In 1857, eager to get his hands on a water moccasin, he offered a $5 reward for anyone who could bring him the snake and put it in his hands. Someone did. A short time later, a second person came to claim the reward and grew angry upon learning he was too late. He became aggressive. Kennicott snapped up the snake, still alive and still potently venomous, and began waving it at his would-be attacker, who fled.

That spirited nature eventually caught the attention of the Smithsonian’s secretary, Joseph Henry, and assistant secretary Spencer Baird. They extended Kennicott an invitation to come and toil for the Smithsonian, living onsite—first in a cottage owned by zoologist William Stimpson and later in the Smithsonian’s headquarters, a Gothic, red sandstone building dubbed the Castle in Washington, D.C.

There, Kennicott was welcomed into the fold. Stimpson had helped organize a group of young scientists from a variety of disciplines that was congregating in a kind of fraternity, listening to senior researchers by day and letting off steam at night. There was the requisite drinking, along with hallway sack races, war dances, and moonlight serenades to professors’ daughters. When they were feeling particularly raucous, they took eggs from the hens kept on the site and made eggnog. The hens were later taken away in the hopes it would quell their hedonistic behavior.

While hardly on the level of spring break, their antics were perceived as boorish enough for neighbors to dub the Smithsonian troupe “wild beasts.” They called themselves the Megatherium Club, after the giant extinct sloth, in a nod to their local reputation.

“It is five o’clock, when the Megatherium takes its prey, that the most interesting characters of the animal are seen,” Kennicott wrote of the group’s spirit. “Then it roars with delight and makes up for the hard work of the day by much fun and conduction.”

In a letter home, Kennicott provided an exhaustive rundown of the group, which was comprised of paleontologists, naturalists, zoologists, and other specialists, most of whom were renowned in their own right—or soon would be. Edward Drinker Cope, for example, made up one half of the infamous “Bone Wars” conflict, in which he and fellow paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh competed for dinosaur fossils; Theodore Gill composed over 500 science papers, many about fish; Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden helped popularize Yellowstone National Park. Those Kennicott admired—which was most of them—he dubbed “perfect bricks,” slang for good people.

Kennicott was also well-liked, both by his peers and the senior faculty. Baird in particular found Kennicott highly capable. In 1859, he extended an offer for Kennicott to lead a three-year expedition that began in what is now Canada and Alaska.

“Mr. Robert Kennicott left Chicago on the 19th for an overland journey to the Polar Sea,” one newspaper notice read. “He will not return before 1861. His object is to make contributions to the common stock of natural science, and devote his attention to the fauna and flora of the country, collecting specimens of each as he progresses, and taking such notes as will enable him on his return to prepare a work on those branches of natural science, which will doubtless in due time, to be published by the Smithsonian Institution.”

He returned with a staggering number of specimens: 282 birds, 230 mammals, 151 types of fish. Smithsonian’s coffers were stuffed with Kennicott’s labor; eventually, virtually all of its departments would have at least one Kennicott specimen.

Baird asked Kennicott to head another expedition in 1865, this one funded by Western Union Telegraph. The company was looking to map out a new telegram wire route and needed geographical data. During the journey, which would take him back to Alaska, Kennicott could fulfill obligations for Western Union while also getting his own research done. He readily accepted.

But there were signs that Kennicott had uneasy feelings. In a June 1865 letter to Baird, he made reference to his potential death and how he hoped his efforts wouldn’t be mischaracterized by associates.

“Should any thing happen to me ... it might be that some evil disposed person should by misrepresentations make it appear that I have not done my duty by the Company. Col. Bulkley is the executive officer of a big—very big—corporation. {A}nd he makes a good one. Should I die I fear he might not find it for the company’s interests to take any special pains to make my true record clear. This {is} because some of his subalterns are jealous of me.”

It was unusual talk for a 29-year-old, though perhaps not for Kennicott, who had been in poor health since he was a child. More recently, he had fainted twice, a sign he was not altogether well.

Still, Kennicott went ahead on the trek. It was an arduous few months, with poor weather limiting his ability to conduct his important research. At times, temperatures reached -60°F. Team members observed he was growing glum at his lack of progress. He was said to have once groped around for an associate’s gun, handing it back only when confronted.

On May 13, 1866, Kennicott’s body was found near the Yukon River. As his colleague William Dall later wrote: “On the beach was placed the Major's pocket-compass, and lines indicating the bearings of the various mountains in sight, drawn in the soft alluvium, showing that he had been busy in adding to his material for the map of the country around Nulato when death took him. His remains lay as he had fallen; not an emotion, not a struggle after he fell. His death had been quick and painless; as his life had been noble and generous. He lay upon his back, his arms across his breast; his hat—a black felt broad-brim—just touched his forehead with one edge, so that hardly a breath was needed to displace it. His eyes were half closed, and his face calm and peaceful.”

He was dry, making drowning an impossibility. There were no obvious wounds. But his colleagues did note one odd thing—the strychnine he was known to carry in his pocket was missing. A bit of foam had formed around his mouth.

Access to poison and his grim disposition would eventually lead his associates to one conclusion.

A Buried Truth

Because he perished in such remote territory, it wasn’t until 1867 that Kennicott’s body was returned to his family estate at the Grove in Illinois—and in the interim, a theory about his fate had formed. Kennicott had written a letter to his team offering instructions should he ever die and left it the morning he wandered off. Some of the expedition members figured he had ingested the strychnine, which was commonly used to preserve animal hides and repel insects, and then tossed the vial or bottle into the river.

There was really little else anyone could do, though his family made a decision that would prove crucial later on: They opted to bury Kennicott in a cast iron coffin, an airtight chamber with excellent preservation properties.

Equally well preserved was Kennicott’s reputation. In addition to his Smithsonian contributions, his research into Alaska proved helpful when the U.S. finalized its purchase of the territory in 1867. The town of Kennicott is named after him, as is a river and glacier; so are two fish, Etheostoma kennicotti and Coregonus kennicotti. The Grove became a memorial to his life and work, as well as a National Historic Landmark.

Then, in the late 1990s, Grove curator Steve Swanson approached Smithsonian forensic anthropologists Douglas Owsley and Kari Bruwelheide with a curious proposal. Swanson explained he had never really accepted suicide as a cause of death for Kennicott, who had not expressed any ideations about self-harm in letters and who was known to be in poor health for much of his life. Kennicott’s body was due to be exhumed from a cemetery so it could be buried permanently on the grounds of the Grove. Would Owsley and Bruwelheide like to examine it?

They agreed, enlisting researcher Sandra Spatz Schlachtmeyer to look deeper into Kennicott’s life. Logistical hurdles meant they didn’t actually get their hands on the body until 2001. Opening the cast iron casket, they discovered a well-preserved skeleton bronzed by iron with a shock of black hair and burial clothes.

Of paramount importance was assessing what kind of toxic chemicals Kennicott may have consumed or been exposed to. In addition to the expected strychnine, there was mercury, arsenic, and lead. But their presence didn’t necessarily hint at purposeful self-poisoning. For one, the strychnine was at levels too low to kill. At the time of Kennicott’s death, both that and mercury were used medicinally. Kennicott was taking them in low doses to alleviate common maladies like headaches or stress; iron could have been absorbed from the coffin.

The context of how Kennicott’s body was discovered was also important. Strychnine poisoning can cause muscle spasms, yet Kennicott was found on top of undisturbed dirt. Had he gone into spasms, the ground around him should have been in disarray. Instead, his hand was over his chest.

Owsley and Bruwelheide theorized that Kennicott suffered cardiac arrest as a result of long QT syndrome, a disorder that causes fast, irregular heart beats and was probably inherited. It explained his fainting spells; it could also have been exacerbated by strychnine consumption. That, along with the stress of an unproductive trip, likely led to Kennicott’s death. Though heart disease had been floated as a possible cause of death before, this was the first time there was substantial research to back it up.

The case—and coffin—closed, Kennicott was due back at the Grove. But Owsley asked Swanson if Kennicott’s remains could be donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. It was, after all, the focus of his work. Swanson and the Kennicott family agreed it was probably what Kennicott would have wanted.

His bones now lie in a glass case in the museum’s “Objects of Wonder” permanent exhibit. It is a fitting place for a man whose life was informed by science, and who probably would have been delighted to know his contributions persisted well past his premature death.

Read More Historical Mysteries: