Thomas Staughton Savage (June 7, 1804 in Cromwell, Connecticut – December 27, 1880 in Rhinebeck, New York) was an American Protestant clergyman, missionary, physician, and

naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

. Savage was born in Middletown, Connecticut to ship owner Josiah Savage and Mary Roberts. The family consisted of wealthy Congregationalists and he went to

Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...

and Yale Medical School, receiving an MD in 1833. He then travelled across the US and then joined the Virginia Theological Seminary and graduated in 1836. His first marriage was to Susan A. Metcalfe September 28, 1838. He married his second wife, Maria Chapin, in 1842. It was after her death that he married Elizabeth Rutherford, granddaughter of the author Eliza Fenwick, in 1844. He was the father of five children, Elizabeth Fenwick Savage (b. 1846), Alexander Duncan Savage (1848-1935), Thomas Rutherford Savage (1851-1918), William Rutherford Savage (1854-1934), Jesse Duncan Savage (b. 1858). He was the grandfather of the American artist Thomas Casilear Cole (1888-1976). Savage was ordained deacon in July 1836 and priest in October the same year. He was then sent as a medical missionary to

Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...

. During his time in Africa he acquired the skull and bones from an unknown ape species, which he described in 1847 at the Boston Society of Natural History with American

and

anatomist Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

Jeffries WymanSavage TS, Wyman J. (1847)
Notice of the external characters and habits of Troglodytes gorilla, a new species of orang from the Gaboon River, osteology of the same
Boston J Nat Hist 5:417–443. with the scientific name ''Troglodytes gorilla'', now known as the western gorilla.Conniff R. Discovering gorilla. Evolutionary Anthropology, 18: 55-61.

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Episcopal Church History * 1804 births 1880 deaths American Protestant missionaries American zoologists Yale School of Medicine alumni People from Cromwell, Connecticut {{US-zoologist-stub