Greene family returns to UWM to v This was not your typical family reunion. In November, the descendants of Thomas A. Greene met in the Greene Geological Museum on UWM’s campus to see the incredible collection of minerals and fossils that their forefather had gathered over his lifetime. Greene was a successful Milwaukee businessman in the latter half of the 19th century. He was also a rockhound who gathered more than 75,000 fossils and mineral samples over the course of his life. When he died, the Greene family donated his trove to Downer College, and later UW-Milwaukee. For the first time in years, members of the family met to see their ancestor’s legacy in person – and add their own touch. University geologists are in the process of digitizing Greene’s collection by photographing every fossil and mineral and uploading them to an online archive. In a full-circle moment, Greene’s grandchildren and greatgrandchildren helped photograph some of the fossils in the collection to preserve Greene’s work and share it with the world. “What Thomas Greene assembled here is absolutely unparalleled. This is the most impressive collection (of its type) in the world,” geologist Scott Schaefer told the Greene descendants as they gathered in the museum’s display room. A rocky history Thomas A. Greene was born in 1827 in Rhode Island. As a young man, he moved to Milwaukee and opened a drugstore with his partner, Henry H. Button. Their business grew and with it, Greene’s wealth. He retired in the 1870s after the stress of his business began to take a toll on his health.
6 • IN FOCUS • January, 2022
Members of the Greene family gathered at UWM’s Thomas A. Greene Geological Museum in Novemb Abigail Greene Fassnacht, Thomas Greene Hughes (III), Robin Buerki, and James Hurd Hughes. Photo
“According to family legend, he got nervous, unhappy, and depressed, and his doctor told him he should take up a hobby,” said Thomas Greene Hughes (III), the great-grandson of Thomas A. Greene. The original Greene took that advice to heart, and then some. He had always been interested in minerals and geology, so he set about collecting specimens from around the world, and in his own backyard – if Milwaukee’s quarries counted as his backyard, that is.
