The American Ethnological Society was begun in 1842 in New York City by Albert Gallatin and John Russell Bartlett. Founded to encourage research in the emerging field of ethnology, its goal was to foster "inquiries generally connected with the human race" (from Helm 1976). The early meetings of the Society provided a forum for discussion of a wide range of topics, including geography, history, archaeology, philology, craniology, literature, and travel. Meetings were held in New York City at the homes of Society members and were, not surprisingly, a mixed bag of paper presentations, discussion, and social networking. The earliest papers presented at Society meetings were attentive to matters of mapping, antiquities, Biblical history, and travel, as well as to issues more readily characterized as physical anthropology and ethnology.
New York, NY about 1842, Tinted lithograph with additional hand-coloring. Sarony and Major (American Lithographic Firm).
Though membership and academic rigor fluctuated in the Society's early years, and financial resources were not always forthcoming, the AES remained a coherent organization. Its strength as a scholarly institution was due in large part to its publications, which, though not always consistently produced, fostered a sense of a community in the burgeoning field of American ethnology. The Society remained small and restricted to the New York City area in the nineteenth century. Its membership consisted primarily of professional men from a wide range of occupations who maintained an interest in things ethnological outside of their own professions. Members included physicians, lawyers, clergy men, travel writers, and politicians, and, not uncommonly to the discipline as a whole at this time, few who could consider themselves "field-workers." Early debates revolved around the question of ethnology as a useful tool of missionary work versus ethnology as an end in itself, reflecting the division in the Society's membership between clergy and non-clergy. Likewise, other debates engaged matters of concern to the discipline as a whole in this period and reflected the cross-cut of professions represented in the society's membership. Issues such as polygenicism, Biblical verity, race, and "human unity" dominated the papers presented and meeting discussions.
