James Chase Hambleton was our organization’s first and longest serving president. He led the Columbus Audubon Society from 1913 through 1928 and then again in 1935. He also gave programs and led many field trips. Below is a reprint of the obituary written for Hambleton by another esteemed past president Edward S. Thomas, who was a nationally known naturalist, science writer for the Columbus Dispatch and curator of natural history at the Ohio State Museum (collections from the Ohio State Museum, which was located at High St. and 15th, are now part of the Musuem of Biological Diversity).
James Chase Hambleton
1863 – 1938
In the death of James Chase Hambleton, the Columbus Audubon Society has sustained a loss which is irreparable. Charter member and first president of the Society, Mr. Hambleton maintained a deep and abiding interest in it throughout his lifetime. As evidence of the esteem in which he was held, and, in turn, of his spirit of willing cooperation, he was several times during the existence of the Society again made its president. Friendly, courteous, helpful, ever ready to contribute his advice or hours of his time, he constituted a force, more than any other man, in moulding the career of the Society.
Mr. Hambleton was born on a farm in Madison county on November 12, 1863. He was graduated from Wooster College and later received a bachelor of science degree from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. From 1890 to 1900 he served as instructor in schools in Santiago, Chile and on the island of Chiloe, during which time he took part in an important scientific expedition along the bleak, southern coast of Chile. In 1891 he married Miss Sara Paulsen. In 1900, he and Mrs. Hambleton returned to the United States in order that their children might be educated in this country. Shortly afterward, he received a master of science degree at Ohio State University.
For 16 years he taught Spanish and science in East High School, and for seven years was principal of Trades High School. He then became principal of the Mound St. Junior High School, after which he was made Supervisor of Nature Study in the elementary schools, at which time he also had charge of the Spring St. Elementary School and the Fifth Ave. School. During the World War he organized the school war gardens.
He was a member of the Ohio Academy of Sciences, president emeritus of the Columbus and Franklin county Council of Campfire Girls and had always been active in Boy Scouts of America. He was a devoted member and past president of the Wheaton Club, Columbus, an organization of field naturalists.
As a naturalist, Mr. Hambleton was extremely well-informed in a wide field of subjects and had few superiors in the state of Ohio. He was an expert ornithologist, a good botanist and had a wide knowledge of other vertebrate and invertebrate animals. At one time he assembled a fine collection of lichens for the Ohio State Herbarium. In his later years he collected and classified a large collection of the Sucking Bugs for the Ohio State Museum, which has been named the James Chase Hambleton Collection of Hemiptera.
For many years he contributed a great deal of his time in assisting school teachers to become acquainted with birds and other phases of nature study. He was an always dependable and helpful leader of the field trips of the Columbus Audubon Society. Thousands of friends and acquaintances, while mourning his loss, are proud of the privilege of having known his fine personality.
Mr. Hambleton is survived by Mrs. Hambleton and eight children, all of whom are interested, several of them professionally, in natural history.