The University of Michigan began building a collection of mollusks before the first half of the 19th century, but it was with the acquisition of the Bryant Walker collection that the Museum's Mollusk Division gained international stature. Dr. Bryant Walker of Detroit was one of the leading malacologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a wealthy lawyer, who retired early and devoted the rest of his life to the study of mollusks. He collected many mollusks himself, financed expeditions, and exchanged with prominent malacologists all over the world. Dr. Walker was an eminent scholar, publishing many distinguished works on mollusks. He had a very fine library, which included not only complete sets of every existing malacological journal, but most other books and monographs on mollusks, even copies of very expensive, rare and limited editions. In time, Dr. Walker's mollusk collection (containing over 100,000 lots and about two million specimens)and library were moved to the University of Michigan, and became the backbone of the current mollusk collection.

From left: Dr. Bryant Walker, Mina Winslow, Calvin Goodrich.

Dr. Walker purchased many significant shell collections, so his collection consisted partly of blocks of subcollections, often those of famous collectors of his day. Examples are the collections of Andrews, Daniels, Lewis, MacAndrew, Pallary, Ponsonby and Wetherby, only to name a few.

Dr. Henry van der Schalie

The first curator in the Mollusk Division was Mina Winslow, who organized the early collections and published a number of substantial papers, mostly on mollusks of Michigan. She was followed by Calvin Goodrich, during whose time substantial additional collections were added to the Mollusk Division, including large numbers of the Pleuroceridae, a freshwater family of special interest to Mr. Goodrich. Henry van der Schalie joined Mr. Goodrich on the curatorial staff in 1934 and retired in 1977. The two current curators, J. B. Burch and Dairmaid Ó Foighil, joined the University curatorial staff in 1963 and 1995 respectively. Both curators have a 1/2-time appointment in the Museum and teach 1/2 time in the University's Department of Biology during the academic year. In addition to the Bryant Walker Collection, with its many subcollections, and the mollusks collected on expeditions financed by either Bryant Walker or the University (or both jointly), or by Federally financed research grants, a number of other significant mollusk collections have come to the University over the past years. Several of these are listed below as examples.

(1) Collections of the Royal Ontario Museum. This was the most significant collection of mollusks in Canada, but was in danger of falling to neglect or even being discarded because the departure of its curator, Dr. John Oughton, left no one to care for the collection, and the rest of the staff of the Royal Ontario Museum was sorely pressed for space. Therefore, in the 1930's, the entire collection was moved to the University of Michigan on "permanent loan." This was an outstanding collection of North American (principally Canadian) freshwater and land mollusks and, like Walker's, contained many important subcollections.

(2) The Stelfox Sphaeriid Collection. One of the most significant collections of the cosmopolitan freshwater bivalve families Pisidiidae and Sphaeriidae is that gathered by A.W. Stelfox of Dublin, Ireland. When Dr. Stelfox retired he offered to give his collections to the Museum of Zoology, if the recognized authority on the Pisidiidae and Sphaeriidae, H.B. Herrington, would come to Ireland to get the collection. The Museum of Zoology arranged to send Dr. Herrington there, and he incorporated that outstanding collection with the many lots of sphaeriid clams already obtained from North America by our Museum. A major revision of the Pisidiidae and Sphaeriidae was later prepared by Herrington using these combined collections (Misc. Publ. Mus.Zool., Univ. Mich., (118): 1-74, 1962), and more recently these collections formed the basis for Burch's (1973) manual prepared for the Environmental Protection Agency (Freshwater Sphaeriacean Clams (Mo]lusca: Pelecypoda) of North America, Biota of freshwater ecosystems, Identification Manual No. 3, Water Pollution Control Research Series, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., pp. 1-31; revised,1975, Malacol. Publ., Hamburg, Mich., pp. 1-96).

(3) The F.C. Baker Wisconsin Freshwater Mollusk Collection. One of the most extensive studies on North American freshwater mollusks was done by F.C.Baker in the 1920's and monographed in a two-part treatise (The Fresh Water Mollusca of Wisconsin), and is still one of the most important single publications on North American freshwater mollusks since Bryant Walker's 1918 Synopsisof the freshwater Mollusca of North America. In the late 1950's, the Baker Wisconsin collection came to the University of Michigan.

Much more could be written about the history and make-up of the University of Michigan mollusk collections and the prominent malacologists (e.g., H.B. Baker, W.J. Clench, A.E. Ortmann, H.H. Smith, etc.) whose expeditions supplied materials. But the above should give some idea of the events and people that have added significance to the collections, as well as the bulk of physical specimens. Even more important is how the collections have been instrumental in adding to past and current knowledge of freshwater malacology in North America and the rest of the world. This information is contained in the more than 700 books, monographs, research papers and technical reports published from the Mollusk Division since the turn of the century.