Personal Papers
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 05-288, Schlemmer Family Papers
Maximillian Joseph August Schlemmer was born in 1856 in the French province of Alsace Lorraine to German parents. In 1871, as the Prussian army crossed the French border, Max set sail for New York. After traveling on whaling ships for several years, Max Schlemmer settled in Kauai, Hawaii, in 1885. His interest in Laysan Island began after procuring a job with the North Pacific Phosphate and Fertilizer Company, which mined the guano-rich island. The island also had a unique bird population because of its abundance of fresh water, and it soon became popular with the scientific community. Max himself collected a small number of bird specimens.
Captain Max Schlemmer lived and worked on the island intermittently from 1893-1915. He became known as the "King of Laysan Island." As the company he worked for began to turn elsewhere for fertilizer, he took full charge of the mining of guano on Laysan. Japanese pirates began visiting this island and neighboring Lisianski Island to kill the birds for their skins, which brought a hefty profit. Max also tried to use the birds for profit, but all his attempts failed. In February of 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt declared Laysan and the other islands in the Hawaiian archipelago to be the Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation, thus hoping to stop the destruction of the feathered inhabitants. However, bird pirating continued.
In 1914, Max bought the sloop yacht,
In 1923, the Tanager Expedition (named after the boat,
This accession includes two journals by Eric Schlemmer (and possibly others) while on Laysan Island, 1904-1908; a letter from Alexander Wetmore to Eric Schlemmer, 1924;
and the log of the yacht,
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