WORCESTER, Dean Conant, scientist, was born in Thetford, Vt., Oct. 1, 1866; son of Ezra Carter and Ellen (Conant) Worcester; grandson of Leonard and Elizabeth (Hopkins) Worcester, and of Dean and Almeria (Bonney) Conant, and a descendant of Rev. William Worcester, who came to America between 1638-1640, and settled at Salisbury, Mass.He was fitted for college at the Newton High school, Newtonville, Mass.; was graduated from the University of Michigan, A.B., 1889, meanwhile serving as a member of the Steere scientific expedition to the Philippine Islands, 1887-88, and continued at the university as assistant in botany, 1889-90, assisting in the conduct of the menage scientific expedition to the Philippines, 1890-93.
He was married, April 27, 1893, to Marion Fay, daughter of Frederic and Elects Leas; was instructor in zo?logy, 1893-95, and as assistant professor of zo?logy and curator of the zoological museum, 1895-99. He was appointed a U.S. Philippine commissioner by President McKinley, Jan. 17, 1889, with Admiral George Dewey, U.S.N., Gen. Elwell S. Otis, U.S.A., and President Schurman of Cornell, and the commission issued a conciliatory proclamation to the insurgents, April 4, 1899.
In March, 1900, he was reappointed by President McKinley on the Philippine civil commission, made up of Judge William H. Taft, president, Professor Dean C. Worcester, Gen. Luke E. Wright, Henry C. Ide and Professor Bernard Moses (succeeded Jan. 1, 1903, by James F. Smith) to continue and perfect the work of organization and establishment of a civil government already commenced by the military authorities.
The new commissioners reached Manila in April, 1900. Under their direction, government was established in the Philippines, June 21, 1901, with Judge Taft as military governor, and on July 3, 1902, civil government was established and military rule terminated in the archipelago by proclamation of the President of the United States.
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Worcester, Joseph Emerson,
The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans: Volume X: W.
Dean Conant Worcester, (1866 - 1924) was an American naturalist, the first American scholar to specialize in Philippine studies, and the first Secretary of the Interior of the Philippines.
1 Early Life
2 Academic Life
3 Philippine Career
4 Legacy
5 PublicationsEarly Life
Dean Conant Worcester was born in October 1, 1866 at Thetford, Vermont. He was one of the first Americans who came from the University of Michigan who specialized on Philippine studies.Academic Life
In 1874, nearly twenty-five years before the United States acquired the Philippine Islands, Joseph B. Steere, a zoology professor at The University of Michigan, stopped at the Islands while touring remote corners of the globe for the University Museum. The Islands fascinated Steere and he returned for further explorations in 1887 accompanied by several zoology students from the University.Among the members of this party was Dean Conant Worcester. Three years later, Worcester headed his own party to the Philippines under the auspices of the Minnesota Academy of Natural Science. From 1890 to 1893, he studied and traveled throughout the Islands and acquired a thorough knowledge of Philippine affairs. These three scientific voyages to the Philippines mark the beginning of an extraordinary relationship between the Philippines and the young American zoologist.
In 1898, Dean Worcester and diplomat-journalist John Barrett were engaged in an indirect competition to become the primary and authoritative scholar on Philippine colonial affairs. Due to his previous trips to the Philippines, Dean Worcester published a hastily assembled book on the Philippines portraying scantily clad “real” Filipinos gaining prestige and praises from the academic community of America, thus beating John Barrett.
Philippine Career
Dean C. Worcester stood high on the President's list of Philippine experts. Recognizing Worcester's special knowledge of Philippine affairs, McKinley selected the Michigan zoologist to be a member of the First Philippine Commission in 1899. From 1899 to 1901 he was a member of the United States Philippine Commission; thenceforth until 1913 he served as secretary of the interior for the Philippine Insular Government. Worcester remained in the Philippines for more than fourteen years, being reappointed to the Second Philippine Commission and serving as Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine Insular Government and as Superintendent of Public Instruction.Other items of interest include Worcester's notes of a trip to Mindoro and Palawan in July of 1910, and a letter from Secretary of War William Howard Taft, 1907, stating that "the partial control of the government which is now in the hands of the Filipinos has itself developed both conservatism and an interest in the existing government which will have a healthful tendency to delay the pressure for immediate independence on the part of those who are actually exercising influence in the Assembly."
Dean Worcester was also a figure whose opinions and ideas are sought after by prominent American politicians and statesmen in the Philippines. In a letter to Leonard Wood and William C. Forbes, he criticized Gov. Gen Francis Burton Harrison and his method of administering the Philippines. He further wrote that Harrison’s term was riddled with rampant graft and corruption.
Legacy
Worcester was also famous in his preserved photos of people, places, and activities in the Philippines, including native groups of the southern islands and events in the Philippine American War. In his collection of photographs, we can see naked Igorots and other indigenous groups of the Philippines in different levels of nakedness. Present day scholars attempts to question the hidden motive of Dean Worcester in photographing naked indigenous people.
One of his favorite methods of photographic exposition was to put before and after pictures side by side to depict the so-called progress and civilization that American contact had foisted on the Philippine race. For example he would put an old picture of rundown Bilibid prison under the Spanish regime and juxtapose a newly commissioned photo of the same prison but this time done up a la Americana with model prisoners in uniforms standing in a drill. A Bontok boy in his native costume would be shown a year after in an American schoolboy outfit supposedly proving the beneficent advantage of American colonization.
One group of scholars interpreted the “Worcester photographs” as a powerful political and psychological tool to manipulate the American public in justifying the colonization and subjugation of the Philippine Islands since nakedness and the idea of clothing can be used as a system of classifying a group of people as civilized or uncivilized. Other scholars, including Philippine scholar Alfred McCoy bluntly interpreted the “Worcester photographs” as a simple voyeuristic and pornographic subconscious desire of Dean Worcester.
Publications
Aside from these photographs, his other publications include, besides various papers:The Philippine Islands and Their People (1898)
The Non-Christian Tribes of Northern Luzon (1906)
The Philippines Past and Present (two volumes, 1913; new edition, 1914)
One Year of the New Era (1914)
Field sports among the wild men of Northern Luzon (1911)
Slavery and peonage in the Philippine Islands (1913)
A history of Asiatic cholera in the Philippine Islands (1908)
Dean Conant Worcester est un ornithologue américain, né en 1866 à Thetford dans le Vermont et mort en 1924.
Il fait ses études à l’université du Michigan où il obtient son Bachelor of Arts en 1889. Il participe à l’expédition conduite par Joseph Beal Steere (1842-1940) aux Philippines de 1887 à 1889 aux côtés du médecin-militaire Frank Swift Bourns.
De 1899 à 1901, il fait partie de la Commission américaine sur les Philippines. Jusqu’en 1913, il est secrétaire au ministère de l’intérieur auprès du gouvernement de l’archipel.
Worcester est notamment l'auteur de :
The Philippine Islands and Their People (1898)
The Non-Christian Tribes of Northern Luzon (1906)
The Philippines Past and Present (deux volumes, 1913 réédité en 1914)
Hand List Of The Birds Of The Philippine Islands (1906) by Richard Crittenden Mcgregor, Dean Conant Worcester (Paperback - 02-2008)
Preliminary Notes On The Birds And Mammals Collected By The Menage Scientific Expedition To The Philippine Islands (1894) by Frank S. Bourns, Dean C. Worcester (Paperback - 11-2007)
February 20, 2009
Worcester’s buttonquail (Turnix worcesteri)
Worcester’s buttonquail (Turnix worcesteri) has been rediscovered, but on its way to the cooking pot. It is endemic to the island of Luzon in the Philippines, where hunters snared the bird, and the bird later turned up in a market where it was photographed.This species of buttonquail “was previously only known through drawings based on dead museum specimens.”
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists the Worcester’s buttonquail as “Data Deficient.” The IUCN Red List
also states that “buttonquails are a notoriously cryptic and unobtrusive family of birds, and the species could conceivably occur in reasonable numbers somewhere, [and] if it does inhabit grasslands, it cannot be assumed that increases in this habitat on Luzon have benefited the species, which may prove to have specific ecological requirements not met by the creation of pastures or cropland through forest clearance.” From the Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom“This is a very important finding,” said Philippines-based Arne Jensen, a Danish ornithologist who heads the bird club’s records committee.
“Once you don’t see a bird species in a generation, you start to wonder if it’s extinct, and for this bird species we simply do not know its status at all.”
The quail’s breeding area remains unknown, though ornithologists suspect it resides in the high mountain grasslands of the Cordillera mountain range to the west of the Caraballos on the main island of Luzon.
Records indicate that the quail, which was named after Dean Conant Worcester, an American zoologist who worked in the Philippines in the early 20th century, was being sold at a Manila wet market in 1902. Since then, just a few single specimens have been documented in Nueva Vizcaya and Benguet provinces, which form part of the two mountain ranges, the club said.