The Granger Papers Project is the independent research and editing of Walter and Anna Granger's personal expedition diaries and letters for eventual publication. It is also a re-examination of the history of their era. In several significant respects, this is the first treatment of Walter Granger's era based on a significantly more complete documentary record. In addition to paleontology, the study of evolution, and Granger's fossil-collecting expeditions to the American West throughout his life, the Faiyum of Egypt in 1907, and China and Mongolia from 1921 to 1930 (Central Asiatic Expeditions), research topics include: American foreign policy; western civilian, missionary, and military interests in Asia; the First and Second Asiatic Expeditions; The Explorers Club; the American Museum of Natural History; and previously published accounts of, by, or about the aforesaid. While access to our material must remainlimited at this time, inquiries are welcome (granger.nh.ultranet@rcn.com).

Walter Granger Many of the world's most famous dinosaur and fossil mammal skeletons were collected by Walter Willis Granger. He was born in 1872 in Middletown (Middletown Springs), Vermont, and raised in nearby Rutland. At age 17 he left high school to pursue professional study of natural history. His career began in 1890 as a part-time taxidermist and part-time janitor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In 1894, he began making expeditions to the American West as a mammalogist attached to fossil-hunting expeditions led by Jacob L. Wortman. Granger soon began collecting fossils as well mammals and birds. He transferred into the Museum's vertebrate paleontology department in 1896. While fossil-collecting at Como Bluff in 1897, Granger discovered the dinosaur-rich Bone Cabin Quarry a few miles away. In 1899 Granger took over from Wortman as leader of the vertebrate department's fieldwork. In 1907, he became the first fossil-hunter to leave American shores for an overseas fossil-hunt on another continent, in this case Northern Africa's Faiyum of Egypt. In 1921, Granger became the first paleontologist to collect fossils in southern China and, in 1922, the first to collect the famous dinosaur, mammal, and dinosaur egg fossils from the Mongolias and the Gobi Desert. This ensuing decade of exploration in China and Inner and Outer Mongolia was known as the Central Asiatic Expeditions (China-Mongolia, 1921-1930), and Granger was the Expeditions' chief paleontologist and second-in-command. In 1921, Granger also, along with Swedish geologist Johann Gunnar Andersson and Austrian paleontologist Otto Zdansky, located and commenced the excavation at Zhoukoudian that ultimately produced the famous Peking Man skull several years later.

Granger collected the Apatosaurus prominently displayed at the American Museum, as well as many of the other well-known dinosaurs, dinosaur eggs, exotic mammals, horses, primates, etc., displayed at the Museum. He spent many seasons in the American West, particularly in the Bighorn, Clark's Fork, and Wind River basins and Medicine Bow area of Wyoming, as well as the San Juan Basin in the Four Corners. Granger's career lasted more than fifty years as he quickly achieved international recognition as a fossil-hunter, paleontologist, and author. He truly was on the leading edge of paleontology as his writings and his fieldwork in Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, Egypt, China, and Mongolia made major contributions to scientific and evolutionary studies. His various fossil collections also substantially augmented the holdings of the American Museum.

Granger received an honorary doctorate in science from Middlebury College in 1933. He was a member of a number of professional societies and The Explorers Club which he served as president from 1935 to 1937. He died in the field at Lusk, Wyoming, in 1941. Shortly after his death, the American Museum named one of its fossil halls after him and erected a plaque to his memory. Both honors were removed in the early 1990s.

Anna Granger Anna Deane Granger was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1874. She attended the Brooklyn Normal School and then traveled throughout Europe. She married Walter Granger in 1903. They took a small apartment on New York's West side near the American Museum. Anna lived in China for almost the entire decade of the Central Asiatic Expeditions (China-Mongolia, 1921-1930). She traveled by train, boat, and foot to Walter's remote wintertime fieldwork sites in China's Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. More than once, the couple experienced direct encounters with local bandits, renegade troops, and battling warlords in the Yangtze area.

Anna loved travel, art, music, and reading. She was fluent in French and studied Chinese and German. She was an amateur botanist and anthropologist and published on native life and customs in China. Anna died in a New Jersey rest home in 1952.

(2006)

Vin Morgan is the managing director of The Granger Papers Project. He enjoyed professional careers in law, administration, and management in Washington, DC, and New York City before becoming as a consultant and expert witness in commodity futures matters in the early 1980s. A decade later, he transitioned into independent scholarship and The Granger Papers Project based on an archive he had acquired in 1977. He holds a juris doctor from SUNY at Buffalo School of Law where he was editor-in-chief of the Buffalo Law Review, a scholarly journal. He is a member of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars (NCIS), as well as the DC Bar. He has also been a collegiate sailing coach and sailing school instructor. From 1968 to 1970, he served in the Panama Canal Zone as a G-2 intelligence analyst and later in the 420th mechanized infantry as a reconnaissance platoon officer, company executive officer and battalion adjutant. His interests include reading; the arts; jazz, blues, gospel and classical music; swimming and x-c skiing; hiking and camping; fossil-hunting; and one-design yacht racing. He also enjoys photography and some of his work may be found at photo.net.

Vin has coauthored two monographs: "Walter Granger, 1872-1941, Paleontologist" (New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science Bulletin 19, with S.G. Lucas) and "Notes From Diary--Fayum Trip, 1907" (New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science Bulletin 22, with S.G. Lucas). A website version of Granger's pioneering 1907 Fayum expedition and historic account of it may be found at Faiyum Diary--Forgotten Expedition to a Lost World. This site has received great interest. It was featured at the Italian online journal Erewhon (archived under "Il mondo perduto-Una spedizione scientifica nel Faiyum") and is now a part of the online curriculum at McGraw Hill and Harcourt Brace. It is also used by the Egyptian government to promote tourism, and has been cited in UNESCO efforts to protect the Fayum.

In 1997, he published "Badlands Mary" in Science, Values, and the American West (The Halcyon Series, Vol. 19, Nevada Humanities Committee, 1997)(reviewed in Weber Studies). In 2001, he co-authored and published a childrens book entitled Fayûm Fossil Hunt, Egypt, 1907: Diary of an expedition. Vin has also published book reviews in the March/April and September/October 1999 issues of "Discovering Archaeology" and publishes an occasional book review at Amazon.com under the name 'Ovi Raptor.'

Vin has given lecture / slide / powerpoint presentations at conferences, organizations and schools in Idaho, New Hampshire, New York, Maryland, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, DC, and Wyoming. Included are presentations at Brown University ("Discovering and Researching the only Firsthand Account of America's Paleontologic Exploration of Faiyum Province in 1907," 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt, April 27-29, 2001); Dartmouth College ("Bone by Bone: Restoring Walter Granger (1872-1941) to the History of Paleontology," Seminar Series Talk (ppt), Department of Earth Sciences, April 15, 2004); and the May 3-5, 2004, Geological Society of America Conference in Boise, Idaho ("From Chaco to Kutz Canyons: Walter Granger in New Mexico" (ppt with S.G. Lucas) and "The Late Triassic Vertebrate Fauna of the Mesa Montosa Member (Petrified Forest Formation: Chinle Group) in Coyote Amphitheater, North-Central New Mexico" (poster with K.E. Zeigler and S.G. Lucas)). Most recently, in September, 2007, he presented "Exchanging Favors: encounters between American gunboat patrols in the Yangtze River and scientists studying natural history in China of the 1920s" (paper and ppt) at the Naval History Symposium in Annapolis, Maryland, followed by "Dinosaurs & Gunboats: Walter Granger and the Central Asiatic Expeditions" (ppt and video) at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland.

Vin is currently working on the Central Asiatic Expeditions to China and the Mongolias during the 1920s. He is also trying to coax along a novel based on his experiences with The Granger Papers Project. In the meantime, he continues to camp and collect at fossil localities in the American West.

Vin has a daughter, Caroline Granger Morgan (now Caroline Wilson).

Vin Morgan in the Kayenta Conch (near Moab, Utah), 2004

(photo by S.G. Lucas)