Walcott Camp above Lake O'Hara, July 1910
[RU7004, neg. # 000870]

In June 1888, Charles Walcott married his second wife (his first wife Lura Rust died of tuberculosis after only two years of marriage) Helena Stevens and their first child, Charles Doolittle Walcott Jr., was born a year later. Together the couple had four children: Charles as noted above, Sidney Stevens born in 1892, Helena Breese in 1894 and Benjamin Stuart in 1895.

When Walcott traveled to the Canadian Rockies during the summer in search of fossils, often his wife Helena and their children would accompany him on his expeditions. The children would join in the work of splitting rocks in search of fossils. Walcott named one of the Burgess Shale animals Sidneyia, after his son Sidney, who discovered the first specimen.

Helena died tragically in a train crash in 1911, and a few years later Walcott married Mary Vaux, a talented artist, photographer, and mountaineer. She often assisted Walcott in the field by developing his negatives in camp. Under her influence, his later panoramas show technical and artistic improvement.

Walcott Family Album