A Wikipedia Unitarian

While researching the old Unitarian Church of Palo Alto (1905-1934), I came across someone who is famous enough to be featured on Wikipedia. He’s an entomologist, so he’s not famous famous. He’s not even that famous as scientists go. Still, he’s on Wikipedia so I think it’s worth drawing the attention of today’s Unitarian Universalists to him.

John Merton Aldrich

A renowned entomologist, he was born January 28, 1866, in Rochester, Minnesota. In 1870, he was living with his parents L. O. and Mary, and his older brother and younger sister, in Quincy, Olmsted County; his father was a farmer. In 1880, he was still in Quincy with his family, which now included another younger sister and a servant.

In 1881, John’s family moved to a farm in South Dakota. He attended the new South Dakota Agricultural College in Brookings, S.D., graduating in 1888 after just three years of study. It was in his last year of college that he first took a course in entomology.

Following his graduation, he taught school for a term, then went to study at the University of Minnesota. Although there was then no formal course in entomology at the university, John was able to study with Otto Lugger. Station Entomologist at St. Anthony’s Park. Then in the autumn of 1889, John went to Michigan State University to study entomology. It was there he first turned his attention to Diptera; as he later recalled, his professor advised him “to select a single order as a specialty, and to proceed at once to get together a library and collection; he also suggested the Diptera as a large order in which there were but two workers…at the time in the country.” John began his lifelong study of Diptera in the spring of 1890; this was also the start of his massive collection of Diptera which eventually included some 45,000 specimens.

In November of 1890, John traveled east, both to meet other entomologists and to find work. After failing to obtain a job at Harvard, he traveled to Washington, D.C., and worked for several weeks at the Smithsonian Museum on the insect collections there. However, lack of money forced John to return home, and he spent the winter of 1890-91 working on classifying his growing Diptera collection. He moved to Brookings, and worked worked at the South Dakota Experimental Station, making his first major collecting trip that summer. He received his master’s degree from South Dakota State College in 1891, and had an assistantship the following year. Due to faculty infighting, John lost his assistantship, and he went to to the University of Kansas in 1892; he received a second master’s degree there in 1893.

The University of Idaho was founded in 1893, and John was hired to found the department of zoology. He moved to Moscow, Idaho, to work at the university. There he began working on his catalogue of North American Diptera.

Before leaving South Dakota, he married Ellen J. “Nellie” Roe (b. 1870) of Brookings, S.D., in 1893. Ellen had received her B.S. degree from South Dakota Agricultural College in 1889; she and John had first met while they were both students. At the time of their marriage, Nellie was the assistant principal of the Brookings High School. John and Nellie settled in Moscow, Idaho, where they had a child, Spencer, who died the day he was born, May 17, 1895. Nellie died two years later, on December 3, 1897. To cope with his sorrow after these two deaths, John lost himself in his research. He completed his monumental A Catalogue of North American Diptera (or Two-winged Flies) (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Inst., 1905) on January 1, 1904.

On June 28, 1905, he married a second time, to Della Smith of Moscow, Idaho; a Presbyterian minister officiated at their wedding. [See below for a very brief biography of Della.] He and Della never had any children. Immediately after their marriage, he took a year of sabbatical leave, and he and Della moved to Palo Alto where he studied at Stanford University, receiving his Ph.D. in May, 1906. His 1905 Catalogue served as his Ph.D. dissertation.

While in Palo Alto, he was active in the formation of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto. He became a member of the church on November 19, 1905. It’s not clear where John discovered Unitarianism; there was a Universalist church in Rochester, Minn., when he was growing up, and a Unitarian church near the University of Kansas, but there is no record of his participation in those congregations. He may have discovered Unitarianism in Palo Alto.

In 1907, he and his wife moved to the Washington, D.C., area, then he returned to the University of Idaho. However, an “incompetent administration” at the university terminated him in 1913. His entomologist colleague A. L. Melander recalled the incident when writing John’s obituary in 1934:

“Aldrich always regarded Moscow, Idaho, as home. He had built a beautiful house at the edge of the University campus facing Moscow Mountain, his best beloved collecting ground, and there had established his library and collection. He had every prospect of continuing his useful work at Idaho, when suddenly after twenty years of service as its most eminent professor his connection with the University of Idaho was terminated. It is unnecessary now to reopen the sorry case and discuss the. vagaries of an incompetent administration other than to recall that those of us who knew the situation well regarded the dismissal as an outrageous and unwarranted interference.” [A. L. Melander, 1934]

Upon his dismissal from the University of Idaho, he was immediately hired by the Bureau of Entomology of the Smithsonian Institute. For the next five years, he was stationed at Lafayette, Indiana, where he studied Diptera and cereal crops. In 1918, John was transferred to Washington, and the following year became Custodian of the Diptera.

One of the pre-eminent entomologists of his day, in 1919 he was named Associate Curator at the Smithsonian Institute. He served as president of the Entomological Society of American in 1921. Throughout his career, he published extensively on Diptera. He made many trips to collect specimens of Diptera, and reportedly had “a remarkable gift of locating rare species” on those trips. Along with regular collecting trips, he made more extensive trips to Utah and California in 1911; to Alaska in 1921; to Guatemala in 1926; and to Sweden in 1930. He was noted for his care in carrying out his scientific investigations:

“He was meticulously careful in mounting specimens [of Diptera], in arranging the [Smithsonian] Museum collection, and in entering the records in his great index. His diary has daily entries for some fifty years, not merely a line or two, but a careful description of the happenings that befall an eminent man.” [A. L. Melander, 1934]

He was also remembered for his writing, and his enthusiasm:

“His descriptive work possessed a quality that is exceptional and his command of good English was indeed remarkable. All who knew him well will remember with wonder his amazing ability to converse on his beloved order almost ‘ad infinitum’ and at great speed…. Dr. Aldrich to the end maintained his boyish enthusiasm.” [Mallis]

While working for the Smithsonian, John lived in Washington, D.C. There he became a member and trustee of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington. At All Souls, he led classes in religious history and education.

He died May 7, 1934, just before setting out on his biannual collecting trip to the West Coast. At the time of his death, he had published over 170 scientific papers on Diptera. He was buried in Moscow, Idaho.

Notes

1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920 U.S. Census; 1875 Minnesota State Census; “John Merton Aldrich” entry, Arnold Mallis, American Entomologists (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ., 1971), pp. 394-399; Annual Catalog 1898-1899, South Dakota Agricultural College, July, 1899, Brookings, S.D.; Lisa R. Lindell, “The ‘Quickening Power’ of Education: Women Students at South Dakota State University, 1885-1920,” Hilton M. Briggs Library Faculty Publications, 37, 2003 http://openprairie.sdstate.edu/library _pubs/37 accessed 14 Nov. 2025; Find-a-grave website, Spencer Aldrich, www.findagrave.com/memorial/22930890/spencer-aldrich accessed 14 Nov. 2025 and Find-a-grave website, Ellen Roe Aldrich, www.findagrave.com /memorial/22930895/ellen-aldrich accessed 14 Nov. 2025 — N.B.: Spencer and Ellen are buried in adjacent graves; Alumni Directory, Stanford University, 1910; Finding Aid, John Merton Aldrich Papers, siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_arc_217462, accessed Aug. 17, 2019; Albert Nelson Marquis, ed., Who’s Who in America, vol. 8, Chicago: A. N. Marquis, 1914, pp. 25-26; A. L. Melander, “John Merton Aldrich,” Psyche: A Journal of Entomology, vol. 41, no. 3, Sept., 1934, pp. 133-149; marriage certificate for John Aldrich and Della Smith, Latah County, Idaho, filed 14 July 1905.

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Della Lee Smith Aldrich Adams

She was born on December 25, 1879, in Moscow, Idaho. By at least 1898, she was in the preparatory school of the University of Idaho. In 1900, she was living in Moscow with her parents Percy (?) and Rachel, along with two older siblings and five younger siblings; she was still attending school.

She married John Merton Aldrich on June 28, 1905. That summer, they went to live in Palo Alto, staying there for the 1905-1906 academic year. Della joined the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto on November 19, 1905. She was an early member of the Women’s Alliance of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto. After a year in Palo Alto, she and John returned to Moscow, Idaho, where he resumed his position as professor at the university. During 1907-1908 Della studied domestic economics at the University of Idaho. She and John had no children.

When John lost his job at the university, he and Della moved to Indiana and lived there for five years. In 1918 they moved to Washington, D.C. John was active in All Souls Unitarian Church, but I wasn’t able to determine whether Della was.

After John died in 1934, Della continued to live in Washington. In early 1940, she lived at 3605 Van Ness St. NW with two lodgers. She married John William Adams (b. 1879) on December 21, 1940; he was a teacher at McKinley High School, a public school in Washington. The newly married couple continued to live in Della’s house. John Adams died of a heart attack at the Northern Pacific train depot in Washington on August 1, 1946. In 1950, Della was still living at the same address, now with her 54 year old son-in-law and his 18 year old son.

Della died in 1961, and was buried with John in Moscow, Idaho. On their shared gravestone, her name is given as Della Aldrich Adams.

Notes

1900, 1910, 1920, 1940, 1950 U.S. Census; Alumni Directory, Stanford University, 1910, 1921, 1931; Catalog 1898-1899, University of Idaho, 1898; General Catalog, University of Idaho, 1907; District of Columbia marriage record; John William Adams, World War II draft registration card; John William Adams death certificate; Find-a-grave website, Della Smith Aldrich Adams, www.findagrave.com/memorial/22930884/della-aldrich_adams accessed 14 Nov. 2025.