Charles V. Riley

Charles Valentine Riley (18 September 1843 – 14 September 1895) was a British-born American entomologist and artist. He was one of the first individuals to use biological pest control and authored over 2,400 publications. He convinced Congress to create the United States Entomological Commission and was among the founders of the American Association of Economic Entomologists.

Early life

The son of a Church of England minister, Charles Valentine Riley was born on 19 September 1843 in London's Chelsea district. When he was around eleven his parents, the Rev. Charles and Mary (née Valentine) Riley, chose to further his education in Europe. There he excelled at art and natural history attending private schools in Dieppe, France and later Bonn, Germany. After the death of his father he was brought home to Britain to enroll in a public school there. Sometime later his mother remarried which may have played a part in his decision, taken at the age of seventeen, to cross the Atlantic Ocean to America with scant resources.

Riley's journey west ended in the U.S. state of Illinois where he was employed as a laborer on a farm in Aroma, a small community in Kankakee County some fifty miles south of Chicago. Riley had become acquainted with the farm's owner, a British expatriate named George Edwards, sometime earlier when the latter was visiting London. Around 1864 he left the Edwards’ farm to work for the Chicago-based Prairie Farmer, a leading agricultural journal as reporter, artist, and editor of the entomological department. A few months later he joined the 134th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, mustering out before the end of 1864 after fulfilling his one-hundred day enlistment commitment.