Stories from the Museum of Natural History - Natural History @ 100

Did you know that some Museum staffers have actually made the Natural History Museum their home? In 2010, we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the National Museum of Natural History with an exhibit and website that share many of the highlights of the museum’s history. But we were not able to tell all the stories of all the interesting characters who have worked here. Two of my favorites were Jessie Beach and Roland W. Brown, both of whom worked in the Department of Geology in the early twentieth century and, at times, made the Museum their home.

Jessie Beach was a Museum Aide in the Department of Geology, known for her rather feisty personality. As the legend goes, at one point in her life, she began building a home in Arlington, Virginia. Construction dragged on as she got into disputes with contractors. She had given up her lease, in anticipation of the house being completed, but that never occurred. So she took up temporary residence in the Museum that stretched into years as the house stood unfinished and empty. New night guards often would mistake her tall white-haired figure in a long white dressing gown floating down the hallways of the Museum in the middle of the night for a ghostly apparition.


Stories from the Museum of Natural History - Natural History @ 100