Eight feet long with a jaw that could snap a small animal in half with one quick bite, the Dorman Panther stands ready to pounce on his prey.

But this panther isn’t going anywhere. Killed and stuffed in 1856, this Pennsylvania mountain lion, believed to be the last remaining mountain lion in Centre County, Pa., is one of the oldest pieces of history on Albright’s campus and he lives forever in the ecology lab in Science Hall.

Born in 1820, Louis Dorman was a simple farmer. His homestead stood west of Fox’s Gap along Shriner Mountain in Centre County, Pennsylvania.

According to Pennsylvania Fireside Tales Vol. VI by Jeffrey R. Frazier, Dorman discovered that a wild cat was causing trouble on his farm during the winter of 1856. Pigs from Dorman’s stock were disappearing and he was determined to find out why.

One evening, the over-confident panther feasted inside the Dorman barn and then decided to sleep there for the night. Meanwhile, a light snow had fallen. When the panther left the barn at daybreak he left a trail in the snow. Dorman, armed with a muzzleloader and his hound, set off to capture the troublesome cat.

After trailing the panther for most of the day, the dog treed the animal and Dorman fired a shot into him; however, he had only wounded the animal. The panther jumped from the tree and traveled another three miles from Pine Creek Hollow to where Danville Camp is today. Here, Dorman delivered his fateful shot.

But how did Dorman’s panther end up at Albright? Even today it remains a mystery.

Many believe that Jacob S. Whitman, the first professor of natural science at Union Seminary in New Berlin, Pa. in 1856, and founder of the College Museum (see “Sesqui Story” #2), played a vital role in not only acquiring the panther, but in skinning and mounting the animal as well. Whitman had great experience in collecting and mounting specimens and is credited with building a highly regarded collection for the Seminary.

A 1915 letter from student Francis M. Baker to Dr. Aaron E. Gobble, principal of the Seminary after 1879 states:

“Professor Jacob S. Whitman…took charge of the carcass, skinned and prepared it, and such parts of the skeleton that were needed for the completion of the mount. It was a long and tedious process…I remember well how he and the blacksmith on Water Street worked on the iron skeleton, adjusting and re-adjusting it, time and time again until it assumed a natural shape.”

According to Eugene Barth’s Discovery and Promise: A History of Albright College, professor emeritus of biology Dr. Edwin Bell had the specimen x-rayed in the 1980s and found an iron skeleton made with great skill. While the mystery still remains, this evidence gives some credibility to the Jacob Whitman theory.

Currently there is only one other whole mounted specimen definitely known to be a Pennsylvania mountain lion. It is a seven-foot, nine-inch male taken by Samuel E. Brush in Susquehanna County in 1856. The mount, owned by the Pennsylvania State University, is currently located at the Carnegie Museum.