Elliott Coues

Elliott Coues was a founding member of the American Ornithologists’ Union and author of the influential Key to North American Birds (1872), a book credited with establishing the standards for taxonomic classification of subspecies.

Coues graduated from Columbian University, the forerunner to George Washington University, and served in the U.S. Army as a medical cadet during the Civil War and assistant-surgeon after the War’s end. He was a surgeon and naturalist for the U.S. Boundary Commission, and secretary of the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories. In 1881, he resigned from the Army to devote himself to scientific research.

Coues was also, for a time, a follower of Theosophy and other spiritualist beliefs. He founded the Gnostic Theosophical Society of Washington and served as president of the Esoteric Theosophical Society of America before renouncing those beliefs.

Among his many books are: Birds of the North-west (1874), Monographs on North American Rodentia (co-written with Joel Asaph Allen, 1877), Biogen, A Speculation on the Origin and Motive of Life (1884), and Can Matter Think? (1886). He also edited the Journals of Lewis and Clark (1893), The Travels of Zebulon M. Pike (1895), and the journals of fur traders Alexander Henry, David Thompson, and Charles Larpenteur.

Coues created the first list of birds to inhabit the District of Columbia for the Smithsonian Institution in 1862. In addition, Coues wrote some unpublished poetry, and presented a paper to the Literary Society of Washington in 1877 called “Imagination” about the similarities between scientists and poets. Coues lived at this Georgetown address from 1883 until his death. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.