Dr. Henry Fox, 1875-1951, Entomologist, Victim Religious Ignorance - Mercer University - Prelude to Scopes Trial

1925 Press Photo Dr. Henry Fox,
Former Mercer University Biologist
(Ebay)

Inquirer 11 Oct 1924

https://www.nyym.org/content/spark-september-2012

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Dr. Henry Fox, Entomologist

Patricia Kenschaft, Montclair Meeting

Henry Fox (1875-1951) was a Quaker scientist. As a child, I adored him; he was very kind. My Congregationalist parents pointed out the meeting house that he attended (Seaville Meeting, NJ), and spoke of him with the highest regard as an example of what fine people Quakers were.

He had been a research entomologist (one who studies insects), and his reverence for life extended to the insects that he studied. My one childhood internal complaint was that mosquitoes enjoyed his yard more than most, but my parents told me that was because he would never kill anything. (His grandson informs me that he did have a store of “pinned insects” in a box in his attic, and some of his specimens were placed in museums where they probably still survive.) Nevertheless, I always looked forward to our visits to his home. My childhood observations corroborated the writing about him: he had a steady, friendly, warm personality.

He grew up in Germantown in Philadelphia and received his BS, MA, and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, the last in 1905. His six-page obituary by a friend of fifty years in the Entomological News says, “[he] . . . published thirty-one original contributions, one dealing with plants, three with aspects of vertebrate morphology and toxicology, the remainder on insects . . . In all aspects of his life Henry Fox was the traditional scholar, quiet, painstaking with details, careful in his analysis of the work of others, observant, tolerant, and with a deep-seated traditional American regard for freedom of thought and belief.”

His early career included an amazing number of teaching and research positions, including Woods Hole, Harvard Medical School, Cold Spring Harbor, the University of Wisconsin, and the Northeast High School of Philadelphia.

He married in 1906 and in 1907 began a steady job at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, during which time he also did research at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School on the poison gland of the gila monster.

In 1912 he began six years full-time with the Bureau of Entomology, a section of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that existed from 1894 to 1934. His work in Indiana, Virginia, and Tennessee included investigations of outbreaks of army worm, cornstalk beetle, and the mosaic disease on tobacco plants.

In 1918 he accepted a position at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, having first received assurances from the university’s president that he would have “full academic freedom.” During his summers he continued to work with the Bureau of Entomology tracing the steady spread of the Japanese beetle from its original introduction in Riverton, New Jersey.

During that time he also helped found the Georgia Academy of Sciences, of which he was secretary-treasurer, and the Georgia Society of Naturalists, of which he served as president for its first two years.

Despite the president of Mercer University’s best efforts and support by many members of the board of trustees, a committee of the board reported (quoting the aforementioned obituary) that “Dr. Fox’s expressed views (being those of any broadly trained biologist) were utterly at variance with those held by the general run of Georgia Baptists,” referring to his teaching of the theory of evolution. They threatened to close the university unless he either resigned or was dismissed. He refused and the university remained open until he accepted another job in 1925 at the Japanese Beetle Laboratory, where he was employed for a decade.

His daughter told me years later that he then became active in the movement for tenure for teachers and the strengthening of the American Association of University Professors.

In 1935 he “retired” to Ocean View, New Jersey, to the home that he and his wife had built in 1910. He had spent considerable time in his youth doing field studies there, “the biota of which had always held a particular spot in his affections.” He often was the guide on field trips in Cape May County sponsored by a variety of organizations. Throughout the region he was known as the one to consult with questions about insects, birds, local plants, and wildlife conservation, among other topics. For the first eight years of his “retirement,” he spent much of the year in New York City as an “emergency instructor of biology” at New York University.

He married Adelaide Townsend Godfrey Fox in 1906. He was very concerned about the future of life on this planet, in particular the human population explosion. He believed a human couple should have only one child. His “only” was my beloved Aunt Emily Fox Clark, born in 1908. The only child of Aunt Emily and my father’s older brother, Dr. George Clark Sr., was Dr. George Clark Jr., who has helped me very much with this article. I hereby express great appreciation to my cousin George, a nationally noted ornithologist, who in his retirement takes many groups on birding trips, for some of which he rises at 4:00 am. He credits his grandfather with having a significant impact on his choice of career. His only son spends much time exploring still-wild places and climbing mountains, carrying on the family tradition of enjoying nature and the out-of-doors.

Dr. Fox received considerable national recognition in 1925 via an article about him and the events at Mercer University in Science magazine.* It included the entire public statement by the president of the University, Rufus Weaver, supporting him. ". . . You have not taught the theory of evolution as an established fact. In your class-room work you have always represented its hypothetical character. This theory is one which every student in science must know, and I am glad that in your presentation of it you have never shown a dogmatic or arrogant spirit. . . . I thank you most heartily for your faithful services as a teacher, for the splendid record your students have uniformly made in the medical schools of the nation, for your high scholarly standards, and for the irreproachable life you have lived among us.”

The article also quoted a statement by the students: “‘. . . he always advised students to maintain their religious faith and ideals, stating that there is no conflict between true science and true religion; and finally that the great development of the science department at Mercer University had come through his efforts.’" It went on to say, "Students preparing for the ministry who had taken Dr. Fox’s work were particularly strong in their commendation of him and in their condemnation of the proposed dismissal.”

The article also says, “Dr. Fox was a member of the Baptist denomination before going to Georgia and was not aware that his theological beliefs differed materially from those held by intelligent Baptists generally.” Also, “He was a good and faithful member of a Baptist church in Macon.” This came as a surprise to my cousin and me, since his growing up in Germantown and his Quaker loyalty in our youth had led us to conclude he was a lifelong Quaker. However, his house in Ocean View was right across the street from a Baptist Church founded in 1855, so he may have found that church a congenial religious community. There probably would not have been Quaker meetings where he was employed in Indiana, Virginia, and Tennessee before going to Georgia, and he surely was a broadminded person who liked community. He attended Seaville Meeting north of Cape May when my cousin and I knew him.** It seems likely that after the Georgia Baptists fired him ostensibly for his religious beliefs, he wanted to belong to a less dogmatic religion. What is certain is that in his retirement he was an admirable Quaker who personified the best in our tradition and also of science and teaching.

* Conklin, E. G. 1925. "Dismissal of Dr Henry Fox from the faculty of Mercer University." Science Vol. 61 (No. 1572):176-178.

** Editor’s note: Seaville Meeting was founded in 1693 by Friends fleeing persecution in England and New England. The Seaville Friends Meeting House is the oldest Quaker meeting house in New Jersey.

Childhood Home
5603 Germantown Ave., Phila. Pa.

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