THE QUEST FOR THE LEGENDARY HOUSE OF ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE IN TERNATE

Alfred Russel Wallace’s house in Ternate has become legendary as the site where he penned his Ternate Essay outlining his theory of evolution and posted it to Darwin in March 1858. Earlier searches for Wallace’s house concluded that the site was at the ‘Santiong House’, based on the presence of an old, deep well and oral history. These findings would have been convincing had there not been any more old, deep wells in the Santiong district where Wallace had lived. This study hypothesized that other old, deep wells might exist within the district. A census was undertaken to identify all such wells - seven were located. The site of one, newly identified, well matched Wallace’s clues most convincingly. The evidence strongly suggests that Wallace lived on the southern corner of Jalan Merdeka and Pipit overlooking the southwest bastion of Fort Oranje – not at the ‘Santiong House’ site.