William Ashbrook Kellerman
Quercus alba, L. – 1892
World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, Ohio Flora
Museum of Biological Diversity, Herbarium Collection
Photo Courtesy of Ken Aschliman

William A. Kellerman (1850-1908) was Professor and Head of the Department of Botany at The Ohio State University from 1891 to 1908. Kellerman and his wife Stella V. prepared this mount for an exhibition of Ohio flora at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. This Exposition commemorated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World. The Ohio flora collection they compiled consisted of a display of mounted specimens of leaves, twigs, flowers, fruits, sections of wood and bark of Ohio’s forest trees, flowering plants, mosses, lichens, and algae. Perhaps, the most prominent feature was Kellerman’s series of panels illustrating Ohio forest trees, with each panel utilizing actual specimens. The upper part (under glass) displayed parts of the tree including leaves, young twigs, flowers, and fruits. The lower part of the panels had mounted cross sections of the wood—a finished and unfinished longitudinal section of wood and a slab of bark.