Biography

American ornithologist and plant collector in New Hampshire. Charles Foster Batchelder was born and raised on a country estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts and as a child explored the local countryside with a group of friends who all took an interest in bird life. After attending the public high school he entered Harvard University and graduated as an engineer in 1882, after a brief withdrawal due to poor health. The following year was spent collecting bird specimens in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California and on his return in 1884 Batchelder entered the commercial world as an engineer. This would only last for a year as it seemed to aggravate his illness and so in 1886 he left to travel Europe and regain strength. Collecting there for over a year he returned home but would never again enter the world of business. Instead Batchelder continued his collecting trips throughout the United States, visiting California, Maine, North Carolina and the Catskill Mountains over the following years.

In 1895 Batchelder married Laura Poor Stone and together they had four sons. Moving to Seal Harbour, Maine for a few years, the childrens' recurring illness soon led them to settle in Peterborough, New Hampshire on a large estate. His career in botany began later on, although he had taken courses in this subject while at university. Batchelder collected plants in the southern counties of New Hampshire and was elected to the New England Botanical Club in 1905. Although his ornithological papers number about 75, he only published one work in the field of botany entitled "Two Grasses New to New Hampshire".

Batchelder is probably most famous for his involvement in ornithological societies and he was an early member and long-time treasurer of the Nuttall Ornithological Club. Later, when the American Ornothologists's Union was created, Batchelder was amongst its founders, acting as associate editor of the journal The Auk (1888-1893) and serving as its president. Active in the meetings and publications of both of these societies his papers were generally observations of bird distributions, although he also published a few works on mammals. The accession book of the New England Botanical Club noted 5,776 herbarium sheets received from Batchelder between 1914 and 1939.

Sources:
W. Taber, 1958, "In Memoriam: Charles Foster Batchelder", The Auk, 75(1): 15-25:.