Lakewood Lore

Lakewood man was savior of the seals

Long before the words "endangered species" became a commonly heard term of concern, a scrappy Lakewoodite earned the title "Savior of the Seals."

He was Henry Wood Elliott, artist and naturalist who for much of his life campaigned almost single-handedly to prevent the Alaskan fur seal from suffering the same fate as the buffalo.

Seeds of his lengthy mission were sown in 1862 when, as a 16-year-old, he was taken by his father on a vacation trip to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The trip was the youth's reward for having drawn some sketches for his dad of various fruits and flowers grown on the family's 22-acre farm on Detroit Road near Cohassett Avenue.

The Smithsonian fascinated young Elliott, and the museum director, needing a talented artist, hired the teenager to sketch natural history subjects at a time when photography was only in its infancy.

In 1872 at age 26, Elliott was sent, under the auspices of the Smithsonian and the United States government, to the Pribilof Islands off the coast of Alaska to research the then-little-known fur seal.

In 1874, his 538-page report on the seal, containing drawings, maps and observations, alerted the United States to conservation measures that would have to be taken to preserve the animal and the industry it provided for in an Alaska we had purchased only seven years earlier from Russia for $7.2 million.

But getting our nation to heed his advice was difficult. And it wasn't until the Hay-Elliott Fur Seal Treaty of 1911, which was ratified by Japan, China, Russia and the United States, that the unrestricted slaughter of the creatures subsided.

While on his Alaskan assignment, Elliott met and married Alexandra Melovidoff, daughter of an official on the staff of the last Russian governor of Alaska.

When Elliott returned to Lakewood with Alexandra and their baby daughter, his wife's beauty and ready smile created excitement on the local social scene.

Our dedicated naturalist reared nine more children and continued to champion a square deal for the fur seal until he died in 1930 at age 84.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post November 30, 1989. Reprinted with permission.

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