Job Bicknell Ellis papers

Job Bicknell Ellis (1829-1905) was an American mycologist best known for his work as a collector and classifier of fungi, primarily pyrenomycetes. Ellis was born in Potsdam, New York 21 January 1829. He graduated from Union College in Schenectady, NY (1849) and began an erratic career as a classics teacher and farmer in New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Having no formal training as a botanist or mycologist, he progressively took up mycological fieldwork and dedicated his life to the collection and exchange of dried specimens (exsiccati), creating reference collections sold in sets of one hundred. The most important of these so-called "centuries" of specimens are Fungi Nova-Caesareenses [sic] (Fungi of New Jersey) (1878) and the North American Fungi issued in series from 1878 to 1898.

In 1856 Ellis married Arvilla J. Bacon who became his lifelong assistant and collaborator in assembling duplicate sets of exsiccati. Based in Newfield, New Jersey Ellis maintained a voluminous correspondence with American and European mycologists, a virtual "Who's Who" of 19th century mycology. In 1880 Ellis began to receive financial support from Benjamin Matlock Everhart, a wealthy merchant of Westchester, Pennsylvania. Together they co-authored North American Pyrenomycetes (1892). With William A. Kellerman, Ellis and Everhart founded the Journal of Mycology (1895), a forerunner to Mycologia. Toward the end of his life (1896) Ellis sold his collection of over 100,000 specimens to the NYBG for its Cryptogamic Herbarium. Ellis published over 500 scientific articles. He died 30 December 1905 in Newfield.