STUART, Norton

Norton Stewart at Scorpion Ranch, Santa Cruz Island, 1927

STUART, Norton ( 1880-1935), New York-born artist, Assistant Curator and then Curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 1924-1929.

According to the Museum's Annual Reports, Norton Stuart is listed as follows:

• 1923-1934 no mention
• 1924-1925 Assistant Curator
• 1925 Curator
• 1926 Curator
• 1927 Curator
• 1928 Curator with asterisk * “on indefinite leave after Dec. 1st”
• 1929 Curator with asterisk * “on indefinite leave”
• 1930 no mention; David Banks Rogers is listed as Curator

In 1925 he ran a “sea group” at the museum.

• July 1926 “Mr. Stuart spent a week in July [1926] cruising with Mr. M. E. Rodehaver among the Channel Islands, particularly on Santa Cruz. Mr. Stuart visited a number of kitchen middens along the east side of Santa Cruz.”

• August, 1926 “while cruising about San Miguel, Mr. Stuart noted a female elephant seal in one of the rookeries of the Steller sea lion.”

• September 1926, he delivered a lecture entitled “The Mystery of the Channel Islands”

• October 1926 he delivered a lecture entitled “Islands of the Santa Barbara Channel”

• November 1926 he delivered a lecture entitled “The Channel Islands”

• February 1927 he delivered a lecture entitled “The Channel Islands”

• Also in 1927, Norton Stuart and friends Webb Willits and Mort Rodehaver made a trip to Santa Cruz Island together. It was reported Stuart had “enthusiasm for his subject, and intimate knowledge.”

• In September 1928 Stuart was questioned in regard to the shooting death of his former museum secretary, Miss Elizabeth Jordan. Her body was found at the Southwest Museum in Pasadena shortly after he had met with her on Saturday, September 8. She had left her position at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History about three months prior to her death to make an eastern trip, and then went to her home at San Diego upon her return. Stuart was placed on indefinite leave at the Museum at the end of December 1928, never to return to the position.

Stuart contributed seven plates to Common Birds of Santa Barbara (1928) by Edward S. Spaulding.

Stuart was co-leader of two expeditions for Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, both financed by young heir, Phillip Matthiessen Chancellor:

• 1929-1930 Chancellor-Stuart expedition to the South Pacific, which obtained rare zoological specimens, including two of the giant lizard of Komodo, Dutch East Indies, and two of the reticulated python of Borneo, largest reptile known to science;

• 1930 Chancellor-Stuart expedition to Aitutaki, Cook Islands.