Dr. Mary Ann Vinton grew up as a member of a five-generation family of cattle ranchers in the Nebraska Sandhills. She did an undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Wyoming, a MS at Kansas State University, and a PhD in Ecology at Colorado State University. She is now Professor of Biology and Director of Environmental Science at Creighton University in Omaha. Dr. Vinton teaches courses in biology, ecology, and environmental science. Her research program revolves around the ecosystem consequences of human impacts on plant communities, such as impacts wrought by invasive plants or the demise of once-common plants. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA-Nebraska Space Grant, and Nebraska Environmental Trust, and involves close mentoring of undergraduate research students. Recently, she has returned to the Sandhills to reconnect with her roots and study how landscapes are changing with management and climate. Dr. Vinton inherited a section of land on the Dismal River from her mother and “Kinkaided” by her great, great aunt, Mary Crouch. The section is known as the “Aunt Mary” and is surrounded by family. She has used the Aunt Mary as a study site for biodiversity work and analyses of the landscape diversity inherent in the wet meadows and dry dunes in the Sandhills. In talking with friends and family, Dr. Vinton has become interested in the factors that affect land management and how decisions and attitudes are often not based on science or economic optimization, but often involve feelings of obligation and connection, stemming from long relationships between one another and land. In her presentation, she will blend ideas from natural and social science to explore the status and future of the Nebraska Sandhills as one of the most intact grasslands in the world.

ARCHIE AND THE MAIBENS 

 By Daniel Sitzman for the winter 2020-2021 edition, reprinted with permission

Hector and Benjamin Maiben, two brothers born in Wisconsin to a Scottish father and English mother, grew corn near Palmyra, Nebraska, in the early 20th century. Both brothers enthusiastically supported science research in Nebraska during their lives. Hector was instrumental in funding fossil research and displays by Nebraska State Museum director Erwin Hinkley Barbour. Charles Morrill, for whom Morrill Hall is named, and Hector Maiben were described in Barbour’s A Preliminary Report on the Nebraska State Museum (1924) as “generous contributors” to the Nebraska State Museum, not just financially, but for sharing their fossil collections for display at the museum, which included Hector’s “giant fossil tortoises of the state” and his elephant bones collection.

Barbour would soon announce his most famous “find” as “The World’s Largest Elephant” at the H. S. Karriger farm 16 miles north of Curtis. Mrs. Karriger had noticed her chickens preferred a limey substance on the ground. As she investigated, she discovered a huge tusk and head that she exhumed and displayed at the county fair, drawing Hector and Barbour’s attention. Barbour, with Hector Maiben’s funding, made further excavations, and in 1925 authored the first of the scientific papers of the find. The species of a “prehistoric elephant” that eventually was named Archidiskodon maibeni to honor Hector, is the specimen that we in Nebraska know commonly as “Archie.” While passionate about ensuring that Nebraska paleontology finds were available for public display, Hector also made a name for himself in the national science community. When Hector died in 1931, a bequest of $37,833.40 (equivalent to about $720,000 in the year 2025) was donated to AAAS to fund the national conference’s annual lecture, an arrangement which apparently ran through 1940.
 

Benjamin and his wife Rachael (herself a 1898 graduate of the University of Nebraska College of Chemical Engineering and a NAS member) established in their will that their possessions would be sold so that, as The Lincoln Star headline of May 24, 1959,proclaimed, “Every Nebraskan to Benefit from Maiben Legacy.” The intent of their financial and land donations to the Nebraska Academy of Sciences through the University of Nebraska Foundation “is to expose Nebraska children to the wonders of the natural science world.” Starting in 1960, NAS and, later NATS, named the keynote lectures at annual meetings to honor the Maiben family legacy.

In 1999, the Nebraska Academy of Sciences, faced with financial situation of being “land rich and money poor,” opted to sell the 160 acres of Maiben land near Palmyra. The funds from that sale, combined with the bequest from Bertrand and Marion Schultz, are a bulk of the assets that continue to fund scholarships dispersed by the Academy.

Arnold, L. B. “The Barbours: A Family in Paleontology,” Nebraska History 94 (2013): 176-187 Barbour, E. H. “Skeletal Parts of the Columbian Mammoth Elephas maibeni, sp. nov.” Bulletin of the Nebraska State Museum, Vol. 1, Bulletin 10, August 1925. Barbour, E. H. “A Preliminary Report on the Nebraska State Museum Bulletin of the Nebraska State Museum, Vol. 1, Bulletin 1, December 1924. Auction Notice. The Lincoln Star. 15 August 1999. Year: 1910; Census Place: Palmyra, Otoe, Nebraska; Roll: T624_852; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 0140; FHL microfilm: 1374865 “57 Years the Maibens Farm: They’re Still Going Strong.” Sunday World-Herald. 25 June 1950, p 106. Obituaries, The Lincoln Star; 18 June 1958. “Every Nebraskan to Benefit from Maiben Legacy” The Lincoln Star, 24 May 1959. Roos, C. F. “Business Proceedings of the Executive Committee” Science 10 Jun 1932: Vol. 75, Issue 1954, pp. 612 Roos, C. F. “General Lectures at Atlantic City” Science 18 Nov 1932: Vol. 76, Issue 1977, pp. 471-472 Roos, C. F. “AAAS financial report at the Richmond meeting in 1939” Science 03 Mar 1939: Vol. 89, Issue 2305, pp. 201 Corporate Records of Hans Nussbaum. AAAS Archives, Washington, DC.