Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn An Oasis for Birds and Birders | Page 14

Stories Behind the Stones:
“The time of the singing of birds is come”
by Bree D. Harvey
A granite boulder on Poplar Avenue commemorates
one of America’s most significant ornithologists, William
Brewster (1851-1919). More than a physical tribute to a
remarkable figure, however, this monument also symbolizes
Brewster’s love for the natural world and an important lifelong
friendship.
William Brewster grew up in “the Old
House by the Lindens” on Brattle Street,
less than a mile away from Mount Auburn’s
gates. Reminiscing on the Cambridge he
knew as child, Brewster later wrote,
…here the dandelions and buttercups were
larger and yellower, the daisies whiter and more
numerous, the jingling melody of the Bobolinks
blither and merrier, the early spring shouting
of the Flicker louder and more joyous, and the
long-drawn whistle of the Meadowlark sweeter
and more plaintive, than they ever have been or ever can be
elsewhere, at least in my experience. 1
The fields, farms, meadows, and marshes that existed just
beyond Brattle Street provided ample opportunity for
Brewster and his childhood friend, Daniel Chester French,
to collect eggs, nests, and birds. In an era when the study of
birds was still done with a gun, both boys were experts in
taxidermy, regularly preparing the specimens they shot in the
field. While Daniel Chester French would go on to become
one of America’s premier sculptors, Brewster’s childhood
interest in birds paved the way for a career in ornithology.
Modern-day birders have much for which to thank Brewster.
During his long career, he helped to found the Nutall Or-
nithological Club (1876) and the American Ornithologists’
Union (1883). He served as a curator of the ornithology
collection at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology,
helping to turn the museum’s collection into one of the
best in the world, and was selected as the first president of
the Massachusetts Audubon Society upon its founding in
1896. A gifted writer, Brewster also published hundreds of
papers on ornithological subjects. His Birds of the Cambridge
Region, published in 1906 by the Nutall Ornithological
Club, was a careful look at local bird populations based
upon Brewster’s own observations over a forty-year period.
In Birds, Brewster documents the dramatic decline of certain
native species, attributing the rapid development of the
Cambridge region as a major factor in their demise.
Brewster was one of the country’s earliest advocates for
the protection of birds and the conservation of their natural
habitats. In 1891, he purchased 300 acres in Concord along
the Concord River before its forests could be destroyed.
12 | Sweet Auburn
Above: Daniel Chester French and William
Brewster in The Circle, 1905 (Photo courtesy of
the Chapin Library, Williams College, Gift of the
National Trust for Historic Preservation/Chester-
wood, a National Trust Historic Site, Stockbridge,
Massachusetts)
He named the acreage October
Farm and spent most of the last
two decades of his life exploring
the property and recording his
wildlife observations. These observations were published
posthumously as October Farm (1936) and Concord River (1937).
Brewster died in Concord in 1919, and was buried in
his family’s lot at Mount Auburn, one of the few places in
Cambridge still embodying the natural qualities he remem-
bered from his childhood. Instrumental in selecting the
memorial for Brewster’s grave was his oldest and dearest
friend, Daniel Chester French. French, celebrated for his
monumental sculptures of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln
Memorial, Washington, D.C.) and John Harvard (Harvard
University), and for completing the impressive memorial to
sculptor Martin Milmore (Forest Hills Cemetery), chose a
much more simple form to comemmorate the naturalist,
a granite bolder selected from October Farm. In the
Introduction he later penned for Brewster’s posthumously
published October Farm, French describes the significance of
his friend’s monument best:
As we were seated out of doors one perfect summer’s day, with
a wide panorama of the Berkshire Hills spread out before
us, our talk turned on the question of death, and I recall his
dwelling chiefly on his regret that he must sometime leave all
the beauty of the world that was so dear to him. I like to think
that death has not brought this loss to him, but that the verse
of Scripture that is chiseled in the stone that marks his grave in
Mount Auburn reads aright, and that,
“Lo!, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone; the time
of the singing of birds is come.” 2
1
Brewster, William. Birds of the Cambridge Region of Massachusetts.
Cambridge: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 1906.
2
Brewster, William. October Farm: From the Concord Journals and Diaries of William Brewster
with an Introduction by Daniel Chester French. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936.