The Lloyd Library and Museum - A Brief History of Its Founders and Its Resources

M N Y YEARS AGO Curtis Gates Lloyd wrote on the flyleaf of Wood's Classbook of Botany this inscription: "This volume is worthy of a prominent place in the Lloyd Library. It is the original volume that was sent to me when I was a boy at Crittenden, Kentucky, by my brother, John Uri Lloyd, and was the means of interesting me in the study of botany. As a boy, I was always fond of natural history and used to spend my time chasing through the woods and I remember now my delight when I first began to study plants by means of this book." The period from this modest beginning until the founding and establishment of a great scientific library, known throughout the world, embraces a fascinating history which is typically American. It is in reality the story of three brothers, John Uri Lloyd, the eldest, Nelson Ashley Lloyd, and Curtis Gates Lloyd, scions of an old New England stock, but reared in Kentucky where their parents had settled in pioneer days. Equipped only with the general rudimentary education typical of the "little red school house" received from his parents, John Uri began his pharmaceutical career at the age of fourteen as an apprentice to a pharmacist in Cincinnati and by taking courses at the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy and the Miami Medical College. Later his brother Nelson Ashley joined him and both had at first a meager existence. Fortunately John Uri soon made the acquaintance of Dr . John King, then the leading authority on eclectic medicine, who introduced him to Eclectic Materia Medica. John Uri succeeded in developing various pharmaceutical preparations and in improving old formulae and processes in the American Dispensatory which led to his appointment as chief chemist of the H. M . Merrell Company in Cincinnati. Finally Curtis Gates, too, arrived in Cincinnati and joined his brothers in their work, but his personal interests were mainly botanical. As a result he collected a large herbarium of his own, the nucleus of the Lloyd Museum, which contained not only specimens collected by him but also material received from botanists throughout the world. Early, however, Curtis Gates was introduced to mycology, a field of botanical endeavor which captivated him for the rest of his life. Following these years of training and hardship the Lloyd brothers emerged as professional pharmacists and purchased eventually the Merrill, Thorpe and Lloyd