Charles Schuchert (b. 1856, d. 1942) was born in Cincinnati,
Ohio, on July 3, 1856, to Philip and Agatha (Mueller) Schuchert. His
father was a woodworker and his parents were in the furniture business.
At first, Charles was destined to work in the family business as a
bookkeeper, but when he failed to grasp the details of accounting, at
the age of 12 he was placed in the varnish room. He spent the next 14
years working for his father or himself, and eventually set up his own
business.
Fate intervened for Schuchert when he met
Edward O. Ulrich, a fellow Cincinnati native and fossil hunter. For 10
glorious years the 2 were nearly inseparable, collecting local fossils
and then later working together in the preparation of paleontological
monographs. In 1888, Shuchert moved to Albany, New York, to further his
apprenticeship with the “great professor” James Hall. There, in the
company of Hall, John Clarke (New York State Museum) and Charles E. Beecher
(Yale University), Schuchert expanded his geological horizons and
furthered his knowledge of brachiopods through his collaboration with
these 3 workers.
Schuchert was on the move again in
1892, with a brief stop at Yale University for a year, while he worked
with Beecher preparing slabs of Crawfordsville crinoids for the
“Chicago Exposition.” From Yale, Schuchert went to the U.S. Geological
Survey and U.S. National Museum, where he spent 10 years working with
Charles D. Walcott on the invertebrate fossil collections and museum
exhibits.
In September 1904 Schuchert was called to Yale University to fill the
void vacated by Beecher, who had died earlier that year. At Yale
Schuchert’s leadership abilities soon became apparent, and he was
appointed to the board of the Sheffield Scientific School (1904–1925),
Chair of the Geology Department (1909–1921), and as administrative head
of the Yale Peabody Museum (1904–1923). During Schuchert’s tenure he
more than doubled the invertebrate fossil collections and trained many
of the following generations of eminent paleontologists and
stratigraphers.
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