Dear Harry

Many thanks for your e-mail. It's good to make contact with someone who has
worked with Calvert material.

> I presume you have the "usual suspects" publications on these three
people, so
> I'll jump to what may not have presented itself in the literature:

I've been working on Wright and Calvert for far more years than I care to
remember, so, yes, I probably have gone through a couple of library's worth!
But of Mr. F.A. Verkreutzen (or
Verkruzen) of London  I now nothing, though a reply from Bram van der Bijl
in Holland suggests that some of his collection or stock made its way over
there.

> As you may have read (New York Shell Club Notes 2: 2-3. Jan., 1950), the
late
> Tony D'Attilio actively worked with the collection from its landfall in
NYC in
> 1939.

Yes, his paper is a most useful description of the collection. Unfortunately
there are no similarly descriptions of the minerals, though there is one
small contemporary article.

> tender to the city of Baltimore (the Lord of that name was an ancestor of
a
> succession of the collection's owners; see below).

Well, so Calvert would have us believe. In fact it one just one of Calvert's
many lies.

> historical, scientific, and plain old conchological value vis a vis the
price
> Ehrman paid (about $20,00.00 fide Dance, 1986), even the inflation of the
US
> dollar fails to explain this disconnect.

Ehrmann actually paid $8000 for it. I don't know where Peter Dance got his
figure from. The then owners were originally trying to sell it for 80,000
pounds, but got no joy from British museums and dealers (they knew Calvert
too well). I think the best offer the owners had was 800 pounds. They
probably thought they'd done pretty well out of Ehrmann!

> started with, apparently).  I have a manuscript (2 pp. double-spaced 8.5 X
11
> in. typescript; undated, but probably 1940 or 1941) "info-mercial" over
> Milliken's by-line which states the collection was begun "in the middle of
the
> seventeenth century by Lady Ann Arundel, wife of Cecilius Calvert <snip>

This is pretty much word for word from one of the several advertising
brochures produced in the early 20th century to promote the collection.
Ehrmann did pretty much the same thing with the minerals. We're confident
that all of Calavert's historical (Lord Baltimore) stories are just fantasy.
The only connection is the name Calvert. But even that only made its way
into the family when John's grandfather Rollings Edward *Crouch* changed his
name to Calvert about 1800 for reasons currently unknown.

John's "collection" was probably largely Calvert's dealer stock (possibly
including some of the remains from GB Sowerby's shop whose business Calvert
purchased in the 1850s), so not really a "collection" at all. He seems to
have bought huge amounts of stuff from Vicrotian natural history auctions
and not sold too much of it afterwards (at least not to serious collectors
or museums).

> Heathcote Woolsey bought the collection, and Tony again took measure of
it;

Do we know who he was?

> Smith's collection went to the University of Alabama.  According to R. T.
> Abbott (1974 American Malacologists first edition), the University awarded
> him a
> D. Sci. in return for his benevolence!!

I guess it was a nice collection!?

Thanks again

Michael