HISTORY OF ICHNOLOGY—Ichnological Eccentrics: The Curious Case of Dr. Joseph Barratt of Middletown, Connecticut

Abstract

Joseph Barratt was a British-born and educated physician who settled in the United States in 1819. He had a great interest in natural history, collecting both plants and insects and studying geology, mycology, ornithology, chemistry, meteorology, Native Americans, and local history. He was apparently a man of great energy and ambition but one who could not focus to see a project to completion. Barratt was active in the early history of the discovery of vertebrate footprints in the Newark Supergroup in the eastern United States but latter developed some very strange theories regarding the age and significance of these deposits. In his latter years, Barratt's mental state deteriorated and he became even more obsessed with trying to publicize his outlandish theories. Dr. Joseph Barratt is remembered in ichnology for basically two things; he sold Edward Hitchcock a superb specimen of vertebrate tracks; and he may have the most elaborate ichnological tombstone ever constructed. INTRODUCTIONOn the evening of December 3, 1858, a shadowy figure roams the streets of Middletown, Connecticut, crawling, over the paving stones in search of real or imagined footprints. Dr. Joseph Barratt once a respected physician and now a destitute and somewhat pathetic loner who spends almost all of his time searching for fossilized footprints. Most of what he "discovers" are not real and he imagines himself an expert who is making fundamental advances to the science of geology. His bizarre theories were counter to the accepted wisdom of the day's most eminent geologists, but that does not deter Barratt who feels that the so-called experts are wrong. In many cases such a scenario might play out that the experts were indeed wrong, sadly that is not the case here.