By DAVE EBY

William T. Hornaday was born in Plainfield, Indiana on December 1, 1854. He attended Oskaloosa College in Iowa and Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa then became associated with Wards National Science Foundation in Rochester, N.Y in 1873. In 1874 he made his first collecting expedition for Wards to the Bahamas, Cuba and Florida. In 1876 he spent six months on the West Indies and South America and a short time later made a two-year tour of exploring and collecting for Wards in the Jungles of Ceylon, Malaya, and Borneo. He married Josephine Chamberlain of Battle Creek, Michigan in 1879. In 1880, Dr. Hornaday founded the National Society of American Taxidermists and in 1882 was named the Chief Taxidermist of the National Museum (the Smithsonian), a position he held until 1890. Two years before he left he persuaded the museum to establish a living animals department and was so successful as the curator that the National Zoological Garden was established in Washington, D.C. (now called the National Zoo). He resigned when his original plans for the Zoo were changed. He left his zoological career at that point for a six-year stint as a businessman. He moved to Buffalo, N.Y. in 1890 where he started and ran a real estate business for six years. During those six years in Buffalo, N.Y., he served as a Trustee for the Buffalo Museum of Science. In 1896 he returned to his zoological career and became the first director of the New York Zoological Garden (the Bronx Zoo), which, under his supervision, became the largest and finest zoo in the world. He remained in that position for thirty years, retiring in 1926 at age 72. The New York Zoological Society is now known as the Wildlife Conservation Society (since 1994).

William T. Hornaday revolutionized how museums displayed wildlife exhibits. Before he came along they were simply mounted and placed on a board. He created and showed life like displays of wildlife in their natural settings. The first time he did this with monkeys it created a sensation. Surprisingly, Dr. Hornaday was at one time a big game hunter. He established the National Collection of Horns and Heads at the Bronx Zoo when it appeared big game animals would become extinct. That collection is now owned by the Boone & Crockett Club and is on display at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. The original building that housed the collection at the Bronx Zoo still exists and still has the name engraved in its stonework. Dr. Hornaday is widely credited with saving the American bison and the Alaskan fur seal from extinction. He also played a large part in ending the use of feathers in women's hats. This alone saved millions of birds from slaughter.

Originally conceived in 1911, William Hornaday in 1913 formally created the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund (P.W.L.P.F.), whose purpose was to promote through legislation and other means, more protection for wildlife around the world. The Fund was a stand alone organization and not an extension of some other group. It was essentially a war chest to combat anti-wildlife forces. Dr. Hornaday decided that the Fund needed monies in the amount of $100,000.00 to be fully endowed and have the ability to achieve its objectives. The goal of $100,000.00 in funding to endow the P.W.L.P.F. was reached in November, 1915. The Fund had three Trustees of whom two were bankers with Dr. Hornaday serving as the third Trustee. Dr. Hornaday had complete control over how it was used and spent. The list of donors to the Fund is somewhat surprising. The largest donor by far ($25,000.00) and also the very first recipient of the Wildlife Protection Gold Medal was Mrs. (Russell) Margaret Olivia Sage. That first Gold Medal was awarded to Mrs. Sage on June 29, 1917 along with a certificate and the first copy of the Second Biennial Statement of the Fund, which was a thick hardbound book written by Dr. Hornaday. She had inherited approximately $63 million in 1900 when her husband died and she became one of the great philanthropists of the early 1900's. In 1912 she had also purchased the massive 76,000-acre Marsh Island in the Gulf of Mexico and later donated it to the State of Louisiana as a bird sanctuary as which, it remains. The next highest donation to the P.W.L.P.F. was $6,000 by George Eastman (of Eastman Kodak). There were eight donors of $5,000 each that included Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie. National Scouter Mortimer Schiff also donated at the $1,000 level to the Fund. When William T. Hornaday died on March 6, 1937 at age 82, the assets of the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund was bequeathed to the New York Zoological Society and became the beginning of their conservation endowment which was exactly what its original bylaws stated should happen when the P.W.L.P.F. was created. The New York Zoological Society continued to sponsor the BSA awards for about 35 years, presumably through the endowment.

The total amount of contributions received in 1912 by the National Council, BSA was $36,326.06 which kept the fledgling organization afloat financially. Of this amount, five people donated $29,300 which represented 81% of the total received. 361 other people and Scout troops donated the remainder. Those five donors were Mortimer Schiff who gave $4,800.00, George D. Pratt who gave $5,500.00 (he was the first treasurer of the BSA), John D. Rockefeller Jr. who gave $6,000.00 and Andrew Carnegie who also gave $6,000.00. The fifth and the largest donor to the BSA in 1912 was Margaret Olivia Sage who gave $7,000.00 or nearly 20% of the total.

In 1914 the P.W.L.P.F. Trustees developed the idea of a gold "Wild Life Protection Medal," to present to individuals who had "rendered conspicuous services to the cause of wild life." (In 1914 "Wild Life" was two words and not one as it is today) In the 1913-14 Annual Statement of the P.W.L.P.F. published in March 1915, it was announced that the Fund was creating a special medal and that the first thought was to offer it to the BSA but the Trustees instead decided to make it available around the world. It was also mentioned that the medal was still in the design stage at that point. The design of the badge or top part of the eventual medal was pictured on the cover of the 1913-1914 Annual Statement. It was the logo of the Fund throughout its existence. The Trustees of the P.W.L.P.F. made the medals (and later the badges) available to three separate other organizations besides the P.W.L.P.F. itself. The French National League for the Protection of Birds in France, the Peoples Home Journal Magazine for a reader's campaign starting in 1918 and the Boy Scouts of America for its members. All used the same P.W.L.P.F. medal, thus there were four different groups giving out the same awards. The Fund also had a certificate that was an "Honorable Mention" type award, although it is not known to have been used within the Boy Scouts program. The BSA awards without exception had the recipients names inscribed on the back of the award. None of them are known to have been awarded without the inscription. "The Trustees of the Fund formally offered to makes its awards available to the Boy Scouts of America and proposed that the Courts of Honor of the Scouts should themselves designate the Scouts to whom medals and gold badges should be awarded." Again, the medals were not created solely as a Boy Scout awards program and the early medals were not formally called the "Hornaday Award" (not until after his death in 1937). Among the early non-Scout recipients were naturalist Aldo Leopold (1917) and author Thornton Burgess (1919) who both received the medal directly from the P.W.L.P.F. It is unknown if the non-BSA awards programs continued on after the death of Dr. Hornaday although in all likelihood they did not. At that point (in 1938) the P.W.L.P.F awards were formally renamed the Hornaday Awards and likely became a BSA only program as the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund no longer existed. In 1952 the medals and badges were redesigned and still use that same basic design today. In the 1950's and 1960's there was just a single gold medal and a gold badge that was awarded. This was later expanded into the multiple award system in use today.

Some Scouts and Scouters are aware of the Hornaday Awards. Many are unaware of the original Hornaday Gold Medal and Gold Pin. Some refer to the early medal as the "World Wildlife Federation Medal" which is a name it was never called during its years of existence. According to a fourteen page history of the awards that Dr. Hornaday himself wrote in 1931, between 1915 and 1931, fifteen of these gold medals were awarded to individuals including just three to members of Scouting and the others to individuals outside of Scouting. A total of thirty Gold Pins were awarded during that same time period according to Dr. Hornaday's records with twenty three of them being members of the BSA. The Scouting recipient's gold medals were awarded through the National Court of Honor and were referred to by the BSA as the "Wild Life Protection Medal" through 1937. According to National BSA information from 1938, after Dr. Hornaday's death (in 1937), the awards were renamed the Hornaday Medals and Badges in his honor. The only difference between the pre-1938 BSA awarded Wild Life Protection Gold Medals and Pins and the post-1938 BSA awarded Hornaday Gold Medals and Pins is the inscription on the back of both awards. They remained identical otherwise.

In the 1922 BSA Annual Report it is stated "A (BSA) committee ...was appointed to revise the requirements for this medal, which had seemed perhaps not entirely appropriate for boy service." The 1921 Annual Report stated "this revision has been thought advisable as Dr. Hornaday believes that the requirements are too difficult for boys to meet." They apparently were quite high initially in Dr. Hornaday's estimation and since seven years went by before the first medal was awarded to a member of Scouting, he was probably correct. Even then it went to an adult. The P.W.L.P.F. Gold Medal was presented for "DISTINGUISHED" Service to Wild Life and the P.W.L.P.F. Gold Pin was presented for "VALUABLE" Service. In 1922 the P.W.L.P.F. withdrew the Gold Medal from BSA consideration for boy members and made it available only to scoutmasters and other adults in Scouting.

The first Wild Life Protection Gold Medal awarded to a member of the BSA was in 1922 to Scoutmaster Harry (or Henry) Hall of Carbondale, PA. Mr. Hall, an adult, received the Gold Medal for twenty years of service to wild life. That same year, the first gold Honor Pin awards were established (and presented) which was known as the "Honor Badge for Distinguished Services To Wild Life" in Dr. Hornaday's 1931 history. The BSA Honor Badges were awarded to adults as well as boys. The badge/pin was literally the top part of the Gold Medal (minus the ribbon and medallion) with an additional oval disk in the design that had "FOR SERVICES TO WILD LIFE" on it. They were cast as one piece and were not two pieces soldered together. They had a reddish enamel material on the front in the oval area. Three badges were awarded to Scouts in Sulfur Springs, Texas and Pittsburgh, PA that first year (1922). The pre 1937 badges state on the back "PERMANENT WILG LIFE PROTERTION FUND" with the individuals name engraved on the back while the post 1937 badges say "HORNADAY AWARD PRESENTED BY THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA TO:" with the individual's name engraved on it. The fronts are identical and both types were cast with wording into each badge.

While the design of the medal remained the same through 1950, the Annual Reports indicate that there were only four named "Hornaday Medals" awarded by the BSA, as they were not formally named as such until 1938. The first named Hornaday Award Pin was awarded in 1941. (None were awarded in 1938, 1939, or 1940) Only two more were awarded after 1940 including years 1943 and 1949. The 1945 Annual Report states that a medal was awarded that year, however, it was the pin and not the medal that was presented. From 1922 though 1949 there was never more than one medal awarded in a given year and none awarded in most years. The last year the BSA Honor Award pins were awarded was in 1950 when five were presented. In 1951 the BSA awarded no awards (none were listed anyway) but the first BSA Unit Hornaday Award was presented to Troop 16 in Bristol, Virginia. In 1952 the newly designed BSA Hornaday Medals and Pins were awarded for the first time in the current design. Seven medals and 17 pins were awarded in 1952. Of the eight Gold Pins awarded within the BSA, the first five were presented as "Wildlife Protection Medals" by the National Court of Honor and just the last three as "Hornaday Pins." The 1943 specimen came inscribed on the back as "Hornaday Award" as did the 1941 pin. The 1949 pin only had the recipients name engraved and not "Hornaday Award." In the 1970's the current awards system was established with partial funding being provided at that time by the DuPont Company.

In the second bi-annual Statement of the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund 1915-1916, (authored by W.T. Hornaday) which was published as a thick hardcover book with only 100 being printed, it states the Fund paid $172.50 for medals during that two-year period. How many were purchased is not disclosed. Dr. Hornaday was in contact with the designer of the medal in 1915 via letters back and forth. His name was H. Newman and he was a jeweler in New York City. Mr. Newman created a magnificent medal and his hallmark is on the reverse side of the early medals, a shield with an "N" inside the shield. The original medals awarded in 1917 cost $65.00 each which given the price of gold back then leads me to believe they were gold at that point in time. The cost of the die from which all the medals were cast was created for a cost of $100.00. The medals were cast each year as they were needed. You have to look closely but in the design of the medal there is a rifle lying on the ground under the feet of the stag. Symbolic I presume of Hornaday's hopeful victory of saving wildlife from human slaughter. Some of the other non-Scouts that received the early medal were two Presidents of Mexico. Probably one of the more extraordinary recipients of the Wild Life Protection Gold Medal was Lenhardt E. Bauer of Terre Haute, Indiana who received the gold medal in 1920. His story is mentioned in the 1922 National BSA Annual Report as well as the 1920's edition BSA Scout Handbook even though he was not a Boy Scout. Curiously he is not listed on Hornaday's list of recipients but may have received it through the Peoples Home Journal magazine campaign. He created 266 private wildlife sanctuaries by convincing the owners of farms and other lands of the need and got written pledges from them to dedicate their land for wildlife preservation. The reason he was not a Boy Scout was that he was not old enough to join. He was nine or possibly ten years old when he was awarded the Wild Life Protection Medal. He was born in 1910 and received his medal in 1920. Lenhardt lost his father at age 13 and worked many jobs to help his family. He grew up to be a lawyer and was a state legislator by age 22. He was admitted to the State Bar one year before he graduated from college. A catastrophic fire later in life apparently destroyed his medal and many other personal items according to his son.

There was a sample medal made for Dr. Hornaday in 1916 by Newman Jewelers which he kept throughout his life. That medal is in the Hornaday collection at the Library of Congress. Margaret Sage's 1917 medal is part of the Sage Collection at the Rockefeller Archives. The 1941 Hornaday Medal turned up in California in a junk shop in 2002. It was purchased for about $8. The original die was altered for the 1949 medal with the PWLPF letters being removed from the front and the Newman hallmark being removed from the reverse side, hence there are two distinct variations of the original Hornaday medal. There is a twin to the 1949 medal that exists in a private collection although it doesn't appear that it was ever awarded to anyone. With that one included, there are four of the post 1938 Hornaday Medals that exist and all are accounted for. The 1943 medal was donated to the Miakonda Scouting Museum in Toledo, Ohio and is on display there. The recipient, Lou Klewer, is a Toledo Scouting legend. He was the first 70 year Scouting veteran in BSA history and was one of the original members of the Tribe of Gimogash in Toledo.

A sincere thank you is extended to Steve Johnson of the Bronx Zoo library who was a tremendous help. Also thanks to Paul Myers Jr., to the archives and library of the Bronx Zoo, the Library of Congress and to the Rockefeller Archive Center for information used in this article. A thank you is extended to Ruth Crocker, author of "Splendid Donation: A Life of Margaret Olivia Sage" (Indiana 2003) and to Baltimore collector Paul Kramer who happens to be one of the initial seven 1952 recipients of the Type 11 Hornaday Medal as well as a longtime collector of Hornaday memorabilia. Additional information was drawn from various sources including national BSA Annual Reports from 1911-1980 and unpublished Hornaday letters. In addition, the very early annual statements of the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund were referenced.