Francis A. Barnum, S.J., in native Alaskan dress, surrounded by Georgetown students in front of Healy Hall

• Main Author: Anonymous
• Other Authors: DigitalGeorgetown, Georgetown University Archives, Booth Family Center for Special Collections, Washington, D.C.
• Format: Still Image
• Language: unknown
• Published: Georgetown University 1900
• Subjects: Jesuit heritage; Learning environment; Teachers; Students; Clergy; Barnum; Francis; 1849-1921; Inuit; Inuit > Clothing; Georgetown University. Healy Hall; Jesuits; Georgetown University > Students; Teachers > Washington (D.C.); eskimo*; inuit; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10822/551509

Francis A. Barnum, S.J., was born in Baltimore in 1849. He was educated at Georgetown College and after a period of world travel joined the Society of Jesus in 1880. He spent most of the 1890s in Alaska where he accumulated a knowledge of native Alaskan languages. In 1901 he published a grammar of Inuit entitled "Grammatical fundamentals of the Innuit language as spoken by the Eskimo of the western coast of Alaska." Fr. Barnum left Alaska in 1898, serving briefly as chaplain on Ward's Island in New York Harbor, before returning to Georgetown where he was made archivist. The "stray notes" he wrote during his tenure as archivist are among the most vivid surviving accounts of day-to-day life on Georgetown's campus, from his school days in the 1860s through the early twentieth century. Fr. Barnum died at Georgetown in 1921. Repository: Booth Family Center for Special Collections. For more information about this collection please email: [e-mail]