Charles B. Cory

Charles Barney Cory (January 31, 1857 – July 31, 1921) was an American ornithologist, golfer, outdoorsman, and author.

Early life

Cory was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father had made a fortune from a large import business, ensuring that his son never had to work. At the age of sixteen Cory developed an interest in ornithology and began a skin collection. Due to his ability to travel anywhere he wished, this soon became the best collection of birds of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico in existence.

In February 1876, the nineteen year old Cory was elected a member of Nuttall Ornithological Club, America's first ornithological organization. It was here that he met the leading ornithologists of Massachusetts at the time, such as William Brewster, Henry Henshaw, Ruthven Deane, Charles Johnson Maynard, with Joel Asaph Allen soon to join as well.

Starting in 1876, he briefly attended Harvard and the Boston University School of Law but soon left to continue his travelling. In 1877, he went collecting in Florida, followed by a trip to the Magdalen Islands in 1878, and another to the Bahamas the next year. In 1880, he collected in Europe, and then he returned to the West Indies in 1881.

Career

In 1883, he was one of the forty-eight ornithologists invited to become founders of the American Ornithologists' Union and one of those who attended the founding convention in New York City. The next year he visited the Dakota Territory and Montana with his friend, Martin A. Ryerson, to collect specimen. The rest of the 1880s saw him in Cuba, Mexico, and Canada. In 1887, Cory was made the curator of birds at the Boston Society of Natural History.