Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr.
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Pamela M. Henson, Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr., bahai-library.com.
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Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr.

Pamela M. Henson

2005

Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr. (14 Feb. 1866-21 Jan. 1929), entomologist, was
born in New York City, the son of Harrison Gray Dyar and Eleonora
Rosella Hannum. His father was a chemist and inventor who disputed
Samuel F. B. Morse's priority in developing the telegraph and earned a
small fortune from proceeds of patents for dyes. He died when his son
was nine. The young Dyar attended the Roxbury Latin School and received
a B.S. in chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1889.
Shortly after graduation, he married Zella Peabody of Los Angeles, a
music teacher; they had two children. In the same year Dyar published
his first scientific paper, a description of the life history of the
limacodid moth. (He had begun to study insects as a boy, starting his
"blue books" of observations when he was sixteen.) He pursued graduate
studies in biology at Columbia, receiving the A.M. in 1894 for his
thesis on the classification of Lepidoptera and the Ph.D. in 1895 for a
study of airborne bacteria.

Dyar began his career as assistant bacteriologist at the College of
Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, from 1895 to 1897. In 1897
he moved to Washington, D.C., to take up his life's work, the study of
entomology at the United States National Museum. Appointed Honorary
Custodian of Lepidoptera, he worked without salary. He held real state
and other investments, including an upperclass apartment complex. The
Dyar family summered at Stony Man Camp near Luray, Virginia. Dyar helped
finance this park during its early years of development by George
Freeman Pollock; it eventually became Shenandoah National Park.

At the National Museum, Dyar devoted his energies to increasing,
consolidating, and systematically arranging the Lepidoptera collection.
He first became noted, however, as an expert on mosquitoes. While the
Panama Canal was under construction in the early 1900s, mosquitoes were
of great interest because of their recently discovered role as a disease
vector. With Leland Ossian Howard and Frederic Knab, Dyar coauthored the
landmark four-volume Mosquitoes of North and Central America and the
West Indies (1912-1917). He published 207 papers on mosquitoes,
including his classic revision of mosquito classification, Mosquitoes of
the Americas (1928). In 1924 he was named a captain in the Sanitary
Department, Officers Reserve Corps, based on his mosquito work.

Dyar also continued research on the evolutionary classification of North
American Limacodidae. He was noted for studies of larval stages of
macro- and microlepidoptera, especially slug caterpillars, and for his
innovative comparisons of adult and larval characters. Dyar's law of
geometric growth, based on studies of the geometric progression in head
capsule widths, became a standard tool for studying immature insects. He
described hundreds of species and genera, revised several families of
Lepidoptera, and brought new, more precise standards to larval
descriptions, higher classification, and life histories.

From 1904 to 1907 Dyar was editor of the Journal of the New York
Entomological Society, and from 1909 to 1912 he edited The Proceedings
of the Entomological Society of Washington. From 1913 to 1926 he
published Insecutor Inscitiae Menstruus. Noted for his strong opinions
in taxonomic matters, he engaged in legendary debates with John B. Smith
and Henry Skinner, among others. Because of Dyar's contributions to the
national collection of Lepidoptera, Leland Ossian Howard, chief of the
Bureau of Entomology, U.S. Department of Agriculture, appointed him a
salaried "expert" around 1910.

Midway through his career, Dyar encountered problems in his personal
life that had serious effects on his professional life. His marriage to
Zella Peabody ended in 1915 amid charges of bigamy, and he was dismissed
from the USDA for conduct unbecoming a government employee. It became
known that in 1906 Dyar, using the alias Wilfred Allen, had married
Wellesca Pollock, an educator and ardent disciple of the Bahá'í faith.
They had three sons, whom Dyar legally adopted after he and Allen
married legally in 1921. He became active in the Bahá'í faith, a
movement that accepts the divine inspiration of all religions and seeks
to reconcile science with religion. Dyar edited Reality, an independent
Bahá'í journal, from 1922 until his death, but his unorthodox opinions,
voiced in the magazine, were rejected by mainstream Bahá'ís. In Reality
Dyar published a fascinating series of short stories replaying central
themes in his life--including bigamy.

During the 1920s Dyar's most peculiar hobby came to light. When a truck
fell into a labyrinth of tunnels near Dyar's old home in 1924, newspaper
speculation attributed these to World War I spy nests, Civil War trysts,
and mad scientists. Eventually Dyar accepted responsibility for the
tunnels and similar works behind his new home, saying he found
relaxation in digging underground. The brick-walled tunnels extended for
hundreds of feet and measured six by six feet. (See article offsite Hidden tunnels, bugs, and bigamy.)

Dyar continued to work at the National Museum as an honorary curator
after his dismissal from the USDA. He was not a successful businessman
and spent much of his inheritance on legal cases and on his interests in
entomology and the Bahá'í faith; thus by the end of his life he found
himself in straitened financial circumstances. In 1928 he appealed to
the USDA for reinstatement and was awaiting his appointment when he
suffered a stroke at his desk. He died two days later at Garfield
Hospital in Washington, D.C.

One of the most colorful figures in turn-of-the-century entomology, Dyar
was notorious for his lively debates with colleagues and his acerbic
personal style, as well as for his Bahá'í faith, two marriages, and
tunnel-digging. He was equally known, however, for his contributions to
the evolutionary classifications of insects and for his warm friendships
with colleagues such as Leland Ossian Howard, Frederic Knab, and Andrew
Caudell.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bibliography

The Harrison Gray Dyar Papers are located in the Smithsonian Institution
Archives, along with the Records of the Division of Insects of the
United States National Museum and the papers of many of Dyar's
colleagues. The Bureau of Entomology Records at the National Archives
and Records Administration contain rich correspondence between Dyar and
his colleagues, especially his supervisor, Leland Ossian Howard. Marc E.
Epstein and Pamela M. Henson, "Digging for Dyar: The Man behind the
Myth," American Entomologist 38 (Fall 1992): 148-69, is an overview of
his life and career. Arnold Mallis, American Entomologists (1971),
includes a profile of Dyar. Leland Ossian Howard's Fighting the Insects:
The Story of an Entomologist (1933) captures the environment at the
Bureau of Entomology during Dyar's tenure. For information on the Dyar
family, see Harrison Gray Dyar, Jr., A Preliminary Genealogy of the Dyar
Family (1903). Dyar's mosquito research is summarized in K. L. Knight
and R. B. Pugh, "A Bibliography of the Mosquito Writings of H. G. Dyar
and Frederic Knab," Mosquito Systematics 6 (1974): 1-26. Obituaries are
in the Washington Post, 23 Jan. 1929; the New York Times, 22 Jan. 1929;
Leland Ossian Howard, "Harrison Gray Dyar," Science 69 (8 Feb. 1929):
151; W. T. M. Forbes and John M. Aldrich, Entomological News 40 (1929):
165-68; and L. Robinson, "Our Editor," Reality 17 (Feb. 1929): 4-5.

More links and notes (by Rob Stauffer, 2011)

The research was first posted at thelocation.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/hidden-tunnels-bugs-and-bigamy-a-strange-and-true-d-c-story

Additional details on the tunnels are found at www.shorpy.com/node/9542

Not online: Marc E. Epstein and Pamela M. Henson, "Digging for Dyar: The Man behind the Myth," American Entomologist 38 (Fall 1992): 148-69

Here are more links pertaining to the matter of the Dyars.

Mr. Dyar was into his family genealogy, having published a book:
www.archive.org/stream/preliminarygenea03dyar/preliminarygenea03dyar_djvu.txt

Present day descendants of Dyar are around on genealogical links.

The Smithsonian has Harrison Dyar's papers:

siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!229005!0

collections.si.edu/search/results.jsp?q=Dyar+Wellesca+Pollock+Allen

The Dyar's book on talks of the Faith is here: www.h-net.org/~bahai/diglib/books/A-E/D/dyar/Dyar.htm.

"Aseyeh" was the name which presumably 'Abdu'l-Bahá gave Mrs. Dyar, though evidence of this is sketchy. She also wrote many articles on the Faith published in the Washington newspapers during WWI.

Mrs. Dyar was listed in The Who's Who at google books

Mrs. Dyar had relatives in Seattle's earliest Bahá'í community (see
attachment), and her daughter, Dorothy Dyar was a minister of the
Unitarian Church in Seattle for a number of years where Bahá'ís were
invited to give talks.

Allen v. Allen court case is available online at google books

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-- Dyar, Harrison Gray, Jr. (Used by permission of the curator)