Bouvé was fifteen years old when the Boston Society of Natural History was founded, the same year that he left school to begin work at a dry goods store to support his family as his father’s health failed. After leaving school, he educated himself as a geologist and naturalist. He became a member of the Society four years later, at nineteen. After nine years of membership, in 1842, he became Curator of Geology, and later also Curator of Paleontology. He then became treasurer, then vice president. In 1870, he was elected president of the Society, and remained in that position until 1880. Much of Bouvé’s efforts in naturalism were directed towards growing and preserving the physical collections of the Society for use not only by scientists, but also by the interested public. In the Historical Sketch of the Boston Society of Natural History he authored in the final year of his decade-long presidency, alongside thoughts on scaling collections to match the availability of funding to care for those collections, he wrote “The collection of species local to the neighborhood, should perhaps be the aim of every society, as a knowledge of all the forms of life met in our daily walks is very desirable.” After his death in 1896, fellow members of the Society memorialized his commitment to education, specifically to the use of natural history collections in elementary education.
Bouvé was also an abolitionist, listed as a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee in 1850. He also participated in raising funds used to arm Free Soil settlers in the Kansas territory against those attempting to establish slavery there.
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Project included transcribing and digitizing approximately 850 pressed plant specimens collected between 1840 and 1890, and composing the above text to accompany the collection. Conducted for the University of Massacusetts Amherst Natural History Collections. The full digitized collection will be available on Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth in 2026.
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