Throughout the operation of the 'Museum of Maryland Natural History' at the Maryland House, the Society received private donations of natural history collections and assembled collections through its members and programs. The continuing success of the Museum resulted in receipt of collections from the Maryland Academy of Sciences and other prominent persons and institutions. The Society continues to receive natural history collections from its members, their estates, and the general public. Most of the specimens and artifacts are now housed in a row house at 2643 North Charles Street in Baltimore, approximately two blocks south of the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus. Our current estimate of collection size is approximately 200,000 specimens and artifacts.

The collections housed at the Natural History Society of Maryland are both historically and scientifically significant. First, they are valuable as important historically documented specimens of Maryland’s rich natural history. They include items collected by Marylanders in the disciplines of geology, entomology, malacology, herpetology, ornithology, mammalogy, paleontology, anthropology and botany. The Society has a library with books dating back to the early 1800’s to complement its older collections. In addition to Maryland collections by members of the Society, some of our others include:

   • Dr. Charles C. Plitt 1908 lichen workshop collection
   • Clyde Reed Land Snail Collection
   • J. Hall Pleasants, Jr., bird study skin and egg collection (pre-1900)
   • Richard E. Stearns Archeological Collection
   • Maryland Academy of Sciences - assorted collections (shell, insects, birds,
      mammals) - pre 1900.
   • John Work Garrett Shell Collection
   • Maryland Herpetological Society State Atlas voucher collection
   • Herbert S. Harris, Jr. Rattlesnake Collection
   • Dr. John W. Parsons & wife Atlantic Shore Marine Shell Collection
   • Dr. Howard Kelly Florida Tree Snail (Liguus) Collection
   • Irving Hampe Mammal Collection
   • Dr. Howard Kelly, M.D. manuscripts and correspondence
   • Bird skins from Dr. Elliott Coues (North Dakota Territory), J. L. LeConte (Georgia),
      G. E. Aikin (Colorado), F. I. Atherton (Colorado), Alexander Wetmore, W. W.
      Worthington (Sheltar Island), Lucien Turner (Alaska), F. H. Knowlton, R. Bruce
      Overington (western states)

Records and correspondence associated with these collections reconstruct the lives and interests of Maryland naturalists within the past 100 years.

Secondly, the NHSM collections hold objects of interest to other museums and historians. For example, at Evergreen House (Johns Hopkins University), former home of John Work Garrett, resides private journals indicating locations and times where he collected shells that are now in our collections. The NHSM possesses manuscripts and correspondence of Dr. Howard Kelly (Johns Hopkins Hospital founding surgeon) that help interpret historic activities at the Liriodendron Mansion in Bel Air, Harford County, the summer home of Dr. Kelly. Collections include the results of lifelong interests pursued by prominent national and regional naturalists, including Elliott Coues, US Army Surgeon (1842-1899) stationed at Ft. McHenry in 1873 and other items displayed by the Maryland Academy of Sciences in the late 1800’s in Baltimore.

Many specimens in our collections also have great scientific significance to the State of Maryland. Natural history collections provide a picture of Maryland’s biological past, documenting some aspects of the flora and fauna found in the State over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Geological collections document the landscape condition occurring hundreds of millions of years ago. Collections allow us not only to read about the things that were, but to experience directly the authentic specimens and thus confirm the accuracy of past observations. In this way, past observations are repeatable and therefore able to be confirmed or refuted.

Some of the collections are from comprehensive Statewide surveys, such as the Statewide Reptile and Amphibian Survey conducted in the 1960's by the Maryland Herpetological Society (a subset of the Natural History Society of Maryland). The vouchers from that survey which number several thousand are part of the collections. Other collections include samples of species now Federally Threatened and others that no longer occur in sections of Maryland because of the impacts caused by built-environments and altered land uses.