300 year journey: Leicester naturalist Henry Walter Bates, F.R.S., and his family : 1665-1985

by Monica Lee

From the Introduction of this 97 page "I first thought of writing about Henry Walter Bates, the Victorian naturalist and Darwinian, and his family, in the late 1960s and began collecting material. My genealogical link with the Bates family is that my great-great-great grandparents Robert and Mary Bates, were the grandparents of Henry Walter. The Naturalist's aunt, Mary Bates, who married John Moore, was my great-great grandmother. Henry Walter was known among some of his relatives as 'The Beetle Man'. It would have been so easy for me to be daunted by my project, but then, in my mind's eye, I saw the young Henry Walter Bates, happy and confident, setting off for the lanes and woods of Leicestershire, an improvised collecting net carried, oddly, underneath his jacket, and a tin ready to contain the day's finds. The result [of my efforts] is not a heavy, academic biography of Bates for the scientist and entomologist. Instead, it is a family story, outlining the life of this gifted and unassuming man, but equally telling something of his ancestors, contemporary relatives, descendants, and collateral descendants. Scarcely any of the family information has been published previously. I hope that by presenting Bates' Amazon adventure in a much curtailed form, some readers may be encouraged to seek out the Naturalist's own comprehensive account, which can sometimes be picked up in an antiquarian bookshop." Chapters Edward and Co.; Billesdon, Beetles, Books and Bradgate; Ants, Monkeys, and Dolphins; Miners, Hodsmen, and Troublesome Fellows; Consider the Turtle; Cannibal in the Kitchen; A Plain Domesticated Woman; Beginnings, Endings, and City Lights; Butterflies and Rhesus Babies; Frederick, and Ann Without an E; Family Tapestry; Whatever Happened to Charles and Herbert?; and more. Also included are several black and white photos and illustrations as well as a pull-out genealogical chart.

96 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1985