Specimens in a collection can arrive at their museum home in different ways.

In 1992 some detective work by divisional staff rescued the entomological collection of the Bridgham family from storage. This private collection of moths and butterflies was begun in the 1850s and 1860s by a “Mrs. Bridgham” and handed down until it was given to the Rhode Island Audubon Society in the 1980s. This photograph, taken around 1904, shows a member of the Bridgham family with the collection in its original Victorian cabinet.