[meteorite-list] Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Gallery

[almitt2 at localnet.com]

Greetings,

Here is something I put together on Oscar Monnig for another forum. I 
borrowed heavily from the TCU site. Best!

--AL Mitterling
Mitterling Meteorites

Greetings,

This is in regards to the Oscar Monnig Collection.

Oscar Monnig was the Harvey Nininger of Texas and mid south region when 
it came to meteorites. He was born in Texas (Forth Worth and Dallas 
area) and became a lawyer and family business man in the area. He had 
an interest in astronomy and Meteorites.

In the early-1930s he started his own private meteorite collection, due 
in part from other institutions cold reception of having him study 
their specimens. He had made many requests to do so. Of these 
institutions were the Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum, and 
the American Museum of Natural History. This gave way to his increased 
interest in generating his own private collection for study.

He interviewed witnesses of meteor detonations or bolides (exploding 
fireballs) and he organized and financed in searching expeditions. He 
paid 1 dollar per pound, a price that museums could not match at the 
time of the Great Depression. Buying specimens out from under the 
institutions that had snubbed him! He worked with Harvey Nininger in 
the field when they happened upon a fall at the same time. The two 
would always cooperate on such a fall. (don't see that today do you!)

His collection slowly grew to be one of the largest and great private 
collections in the world: it contained about 3,000 specimens from 400 
different meteorites. Two impressive specimens both in scientific value 
and uniqueness were two carbonaceous chondrites, found at Crescent, 
Oklahoma, in 1936 and the Bells, Texas Meteorite, found in 1961.

In order to find a permanent home for his collection in the Forth Worth 
area were he was from, Monnig later decided to donate the collection to 
Texas Christian University. A number of transfer of specimens, between 
1976 and 1986 were made. The collection contains over 1,000 different 
meteorites. In 2003, four years after he died, the Oscar E. Monnig 
Meteorite Gallery was opened, exhibiting about 10 per cent of the 
meteorites to the public.

A side note that Dr. Elhman the past curator of the collection, took 
time to further expand the collection by taking extras and making 
trades with other institutes to further increase the collection to it's 
current greatness. Dr. Elhman mentioned to me that Oscar would never 
turn down a farmer who had a meteorite, and always paid them. This 
generated a knowledge if you found a meteorite and took it to him, he 
would buy it. This kept a steady flow of specimens coming his way. He 
was a wise old German who was smart with his money and the many 
meteorites he found. He did write a few good papers on the Odessa, 
Texas Meteorite Craters.


--AL Mitterling

References and some interesting sites to learn more about the 
collection and the man!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Monnig

http://monnigmuseum.tcu.edu/oscar.htm
Biography of Oscar

http://monnigmuseum.tcu.edu/



Quoting Pete Pete <rsvp321 at hotmail.com>:

>
> Hello, all,
>
> I stumbled onto this site worth viewing - Oscar E. Monnig's meteorite 
> gallery:
>
> http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4299332/Main/4298136
> http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4299332/Main/4298136
>
> Cheers,
> Pete
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