Contributions from the University of Michigan Herbarium.

BOTANICAL BEACHCOMBERS
AND EXPLORERS:

Pioneers of the 19th Century
In the Upper Great Lakes

Edward G. Voss

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BOTANICAL BEACHCOMBERS
AND EXPLORERS:
Pioneers of the 19th Century
In the Upper Great Lakes

Edward G. Voss
University of Michigan

Contributions from the University of Michigan Herbarium Volume 13
Ann Arbor, Michigan
1978

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HERBARIUM
Editorial Committee: Howard Crum, Rogers McVaugh, Robert L. Shaffer

Volume 13
Price: $4.00 postpaid

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 78-620015

Vol. 13 is complete in this issue. Previous numbers of the Contributions are listed at
the end. For information, address the Director, University of Michigan Herbarium, Ann
Arbor, Michigan 48109, U.S.A.

This volume of the Herbarium Contributions
is published just as Rogers McVaugh begins his
retirement furlough at The University of Michi-
this occasion is appropriately

dedicated in his honor.

PREFACE

This erie into history is a revised and expanded version, with considerable documenta-
tion added, talk presented at Michigan State University on August 23, 1977, at the 28th
Annual ee a the American Institute ve Biological Sciences (AIBS), as a special lecture arranged
by the Historical Section of the Botanical Society of America, additionally sponsored by the Ecological
and Systematic Sections of that Society and by the American pal of Plant Taxonomists. An earlier
version of chapters 1 and 2 was presented in Bay View at the annual meeting of the Little Traverse
Regional Historical Society July 9, 1969. The ase deals euaaeaity with carlos and local
collectors and observers of plants in the Great Lakes basin above Lake Erie—not with the

evelopment of all botany in the region; little or nothing is said about the growth of teac is or of
Ae into such fields as plant anatomy and physiology or about the beginnings of forestry
and agriculture. Botany as a science was new enough in the 19th century, and it began largely as a
study the flora. Some notice is taken here of early interest in medicinal plants, for these were
often native wild species; a large chapter could be developed on this theme
at kinds of people provided our first rains” about the ae in this previously
unexplored territory? This account attempts to put some flesh on them, to tell something of the
persons whose names might otherwise be quite meaniaae on an old herbarium label or in the
epaaphai Or sometimes a person is well known, but his botanical activities in this region are not.
y effort has been to synthesize in a single t less connected narrative, and to supplement
where peelianty ae ee the fragments nok eae ve nae in our region which have been
published over the t 160 y . The result, I hope, is a readable story, placed to some degree
historical perspective. ne ater of botanical history may serve to remi -" the present an
of local na turalist that the pioneer days were scarcely more than a century ago; and the
serve to remind the historian that there is a rich source of aa in the ibe and observations
of both amateur ne professional naturalis
edding of history and natural fee should lead to vigorous progeny. I have tried to
rovide psig dates and facts about the lives ie many persons so that specimen labels or

published observations, especially if scanty or incomplete, can be more precisely interpreted—or at
least to provide an indication of available sources "for such information. But sometimes all I have
been able to do with the time and resources available is to offer some clues for persons who have

defied more ample Berend treatment. Biohistorians who want to go further with certain
nO or certain local areas will fi at i many implicit suggestions for such research, which is
like o be based on both published and unpublished sources, including collections from which
as can be reconstructed and from which much can be learned about the flora of an area in

e preparing this account, I have spent weeks reading countless biographical sketches and
obituaries. This has been not so much a morbid occupation as one which brings to life the pioneers
of past generations. (Although resolving age ee between different accounts has often been a
real challenge; the numerous errors in dates and other hard facts cited by scholars are distressing to
deal with.) The various editions of American ies of Science provide some biographical data for the
better known iene? a are aie specifically cited here. Helpful references about early
literature and uthors are in Meisel (1924-1929) and Blake and Atwood (1942). The
indispensible ice. resource for biographical data is Barnhart’s Notes (1965); in citing
a ei references, I have tried to avoid excessive repetition of those easily found in Barnhart
and to cite additional ones as well as the best sources for persons whose principal botanical activity
was ee region. I have frequently favored accessible secondary sources on historical aaa for
tee will refer the reader who wants to go further to earlier works and unpublished material.

indebted to a large number of persons and institutions who have nurtured my aay in

botanical hi istory over the pas i amit ans especially the late Professor H. H. Bartlett, of the
University of Michigan; — McVaugh, Harley Harris Bartlett Professor of Botany, my colleague
d mentor in the University Herbarium; a ae Ronald L. Stuckey, of Ohio State University,
secretary of the LR photon of the Botanical Society of America and the instigator for my

drawing this survey together as well as the supplier of much valuable data over the years; and the
Michigan Historical Collections/Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The resources of
numerous units in the University Library system and of the Alumni Records Office have been
essential. The library of Michigan State ee (East Lansing) and the Michigan sa rave
(Lansing) have also been consulted. With ngle duly noted exception, every reference cited i
footnotes or bibliography has been seen ae me. Numerous persons and agencies ae Tes oa
patiently to inquiries which often must have seemed to them to be trivi

The first draft of this account was completed at the University irs Mickinas Biological Station
on Douglas Lake, where my students over the years have repeatedly heard about Thomas Nuttall
and Douglass Houghton, have seen in the field the species they brought back as new from the
upper Lakes long ago, and have sometimes even been kind enough to suggest that the story ought
to be brought together and put down on paper.

E. G. V.
March 1978

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Earliest Scientific Exploration in the Upper Great Lakes (Michigan
and Wisconsin

. The Houghton Era

. The Increase of Botany in Wisconsin

The Brothers Winchell and Developments from Michigan to Minnesota
Lake Superior, North of Gitche Gumee

Lake Surveyors, and Others

. Facing the 20th Century: The Rise of Local Societies and Collectors

Visitors from Far and Near

Oo wea ANI Dn fF W WN

. To Bring It All Together: Cataloging the Local Flora
Bibliography

Index of Persons and Institutions

ILLUSTRATIONS

Dwarf lake iris, /ris lacustris

Distribution map of sea rocket, Cakile edentula

Map of Michigan Territory by F. Lucas, 1823

Zina Pitcher

Douglass Houghton’s herbarium

Specimen labels from Douglass Houghton and William Burt
Douglass Houghton

Distribution map of Pitcher’s thistle, Cirsium pitcheri
Increase A. Lapham

Title page of Lapham’s 1836 Catalogue of Plants & Shells
Newton H. Winchell

Edmund P. Sheldon

Vil

Map of Lake Superior, from Louis Agassiz, 1850

Specimen labels of U.S. Lake Survey personnel: Lewis Foote, Henry
Gillman, O. B. Wheeler, J. C. Jones

Isle St. Ignace, Ontario, from Louis Agassiz, 1850

Linear-leaved sundew, Drosera linearis

Specimen labels of A. B. Lyons and Emma J. Cole

Letterhead of the Detroit Review of Medicine and Pharmacy
Specimen label of Mary H. Clark

Mary H. Clark, Emma J. Cole, Charles K. Dodge, Oliver A. Farwell

A page of C. A. Davis’ annotated “‘Michigan Flora” by Wheeler and
Smith (1881)

Distribution map of Hill’s pondweed, Potamogeton hillii
E. J. Hill

Charles F. Wheeler

William J. Beal

All portraits not otherwise credited in their legends are
from the files of the University of Michigan Herbarium.
The sketch on the cover is from the title page of Agassiz’s
Lake Superior (1850).

Vili

INTRODUCTION

The fascinating story of early knowledge about the plant life of the upper Great
Lakes has never been presented in any comprehensive way. It is a tale full of historical
associations and marked by an unusual number of personal relationships tying together
many of the major participants. In these days of fragmented science and intense
specialization, it is sometimes hard to comprehend the breadth of knowledge and
interests possessed by the explorers and naturalists of the previous century and the
influence one had upon another.

No justification is needed for restricting the subject to the 19th century. On the
one hand, omission of the 20th century removes from our survey the multitudinous
activities of more modern times; and it removes the necessity of referring—or not
referring—to any botanists among those now living. On the other hand, omission of the
centuries before the 19th really omits almost nothing. Before our story begins seriously
in 1810, travelers into this portion of the Old Northwest were more interested in furs,
or in the souls of the Indians, than they were in study of the natural history of the
region.

What may be the first plant collection from the upper Lakes region recorded as
entering the scientific world is cited in a letter from Dr. Alexander Garden, of Charles
Town, South Carolina, to British merchant John Ellis, February 2, 1767: “‘I have given
the doctor [Andrew Turnbull] two large pods of a plant which I had from New York,
called there the Horn plant, from the shape of the pods. It comes from Detroit. I have
never seen it grow, and do not know what it is, if you know, pray inform me?” Four
months later, Garden wrote Ellis: “I sowed the Horn plant ... which is now in flower,
but I have not examined it. It seems to approach to the Chelone or Martynia.”!

In the latter part of the 17th century and on into the 18th century, missionaries
and military men did occasionally record something of the plants of “New France,”
and a studious individual may even have gathered specimens, although these were more
likely for herbal interest than for pure scientific purposes.2 Jacques Pierre Daneau,
Sieur de Muy (1695—1758), who later was one of Cadillac’s successors at Detroit,
earlier commanded Fort St. Joseph [Niles, Michigan] “and while at that post made a
close study of the plants found in that country, and upon his return to France in 1736
carried with him a great collection of specimens to be examined and analyzed in order
to determine their medicinal properties.” Charles, Marquis de Beauharnois, governor-
general of New France, wrote from Quebec on October 17, 1736, that the Sieur de
Muy had “devoted himself to the study of plants” and “brought some back powdered,

lJames Edward Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists
(London, 1821) 1: 553-555. See also Edmund Berkeley & Dorothy Smith Berkeley, roe nder
Garden of Charles Town (Chapel Hill, 1969), p. 215. I offer no opinion as to what the ‘Horn
ieeg from Detroit really was; it is not impossible that the oer eee Martynia Teeouiet
louisianica, was cultivated (and perhaps escaped) in Detroit by 1767. Farwell reported it as rare in
waste places there in 1900 (Rep. Mich. Acad. 2 (for 1900): 63. 1902 T1e01° iy

2See Goodrich (1940, pp. seate

3C. M. Burton in Mich. Pioneer Hist. Coll. 34: 334—335 (1905).

1

2

and some roots and leaves. He states that he has cured a number of savages of various
diseases. I think many of these plants are unknown in France.’’4 Indeed, some of the
plants around the Great Lakes were unknown to science—and many more of them
unknown in France—but it was to be another century before naturalist-explorers had
made them at all well known.

Most if not all botanical interest in our area before 1810 was even more casual
than that of the Sieur de Muy. Cadillac, founder of Detroit, wrote as early as October
5, 1701—only six weeks after his arrival: “The woods are of six kinds,—walnut trees,
white oaks, red, bastard ash, ivy, white wood trees® and cottonwood trees. But these
same trees are as straight as arrows, without knots, and almost without branches
except near the top, and of enormous size and height.”® Cadillac’s enthusiasm for his
new domain led him generally to describe the vegetation in glowing if not always
accurate terms.’

Charlevoix, the celebrated Jesuit priest, teacher, historian, and explorer, who
journeyed to the western Great Lakes in 1721, noted poison-ivy at Detroit and
mentioned the importance of ginseng at the St. Joseph River. He dismissed Mackinac
Island, however, as “only a barren rock, and scarcely covered with a little moss and
herbs.”’8 Many travelers, such as Alexander Henry in the 1760’s,? were interested in
maple sugar. The indigenous peoples of the region were of course familiar with many
plants long before the 19th century, especially those considered useful to them, and
much of their lore was dutifully recorded by later explorers.

This is not the occasion to relate more of the 17th and 18th century events in this
historic region: the battles of the fur trade; the battles of the French, the British, and
the Indians; the key location of Michilimackinac at the crossroads of all travel on the
upper Lakes, for throughout most of the history of this region, the principal mode of
transportation was by water. Even long after the simple canoe had been supplanted by
more elaborate vessels, and long after the first stage roads and finally railroads
penetrated the North late in the 19th century, water remained a favored route for
many purposes—as it is to this day for freighters carrying iron ore and other products
of mid-America and for ocean-going vessels of many nations which enter the Lakes via
the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Remembering the historic background of the region and the almost complete
restriction of early knowledge about it to places along the shores, we are prepared to
focus on explorations of the 19th century. This account is admittedly biased toward
Michigan, partly because of the central—and complete—location of this state in the

4Quoted in Mich. Pioneer Hist. Coll. 34: 137 (1905).

5The white wood (or bois blanc of the French) was not, as might be oo the white birch
(Betula papyrifera), but the basswood or linden (Tilia americana). See, for example, Peter Kalm’s
diary for Oct. 14 and Oct. 21, 1749 (pp. 564 & 586 in vol. 2 of Adolph mae s English ed. of

6Quoted in Mich. Pioneer Hist. Coll. 33: 111—112 (1904).

7See, for example, Mich. Pioneer Hist. Coll. 33: 113—136 (1904) and Goodrich (1940, ch. 2—4).
8Quoted from vol. 2, p. 34, of the 1766 English ed. published in Dublin by John Exshaw and
James Potts.

9 Alexander Henry, Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories Between the Years
1760 and 1776 (New York, 1809). [Reprinted 1966 by University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, as
March of America Facsimile Series No. 43.]

10See also such works as Richard Asa Yarnell, Aboriginal Relationships Between Culture and Plant
Life in the Upper Great Lakes Region, Anthrop. Pap. Mus. Anthrop. Univ. Mich. 23. 218
(1964).

3

region to be considered, and partly because of my greater familiarity with develop-
ments (and the literature) in this area. I have made no attempt to cover the south end
of Lake Michigan, despite the interest of the Indiana Dunes and the shore around
Chicago to southern Wisconsin.!! Some highlights are given for portions of Wisconsin,
Minnesota, and Ontario adjacent to the upper Great Lakes, but it is often hard to
separate work done in these portions from that done farther away. The east shore of
Lake Huron seems actually to have received relatively little botanical attention in the
19th century.!2 Limitations of time and space still permit mention of only selected
pioneers: the ones I find most important, most interesting, most representative, or
most neglected in existing biographical sources.

11At least there is precedent for this neglect: Only two paragraphs (on pp. 7—8 & 14) in Donald

Neither S. Pep
Acad. Sci. 1927), nor Floyd Swink, in anaes ir pie nore Region (ed. 2, Morton Arboretum,
Lisle, Ill., 1974), offers any historical background.

12This judgment can be made on the basis of the text and bibliography in Penhallow (1897).

od a

Dwarf lake iris, /ris lacustris, one of the first species to be described as new to science from the
upper Great Lakes (see p. 5). This is an endemic species, found nowhere except the Lake
Michigan-Lake Huron region. (Photo by E. G. Voss in 1963 near the Straits of Mackinac, where
the species was first discovered by Thomas Nuttall in 1810.)

Chapter 1.

EARLIEST SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION IN THE
UPPER GREAT LAKES (MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN)

Our story begins with the travels of Thomas Nuttall (1786—1859),!3 born in
England and apprenticed there to his uncle, a printer. Having taken an interest in
botany, he sailed for America in 1808 to seek his fortune. In 1810, Nuttall was sent
out on a two-year expedition under the patronage of Professor Benjamin Smith Barton
of the University of Pennsylvania, whom he had met promptly upon arriving in
Philadelphia from England. Barton, full of ambition to write comprehensively on the
flora of North America, recognized in Nuttall an able young botanist ‘distinguished by
his love of science, his integrity, his sobriety, and innocence of character.” And, it has
been suggested, his expendability in the wilds of the Northwest.!4 Barton offered him
a salary of eight dollars a month plus expenses and wrote up an explicit contract
specifying his duties.

Early on the morning of April 12, 1810, Nuttall—then age 24—left Philadelphia for
the eight-day stagecoach ride to Pittsburgh. From there, he walked to Lake Erie, with
some back-tracking to fetch baggage, and along the shore to the Huron River—over 400
miles of walking altogether. Learning that the west end of Lake Erie was too swampy
for practical hiking, he took a boat to Detroit, then a community of less than 1,000
people, where he arrived on June 26. He explored the Detroit area for a month and
came to realize not only the immensity of his intended journey to the interior plains
of the continent but also the greater feasibility of travel in this region by water than
by land. Consequently, he doubtless welcomed an opportunity to depart from his
instructions to go from Detroit to Chicago, thence along the western shore of Lake
Michigan and overland to Lake Superior and westward. Instead, as he recorded in his
diary, he left Detroit on July 29 in a birchbark canoe with the deputy surveyor of the
territory of Michigan, Aaron Greely, who was bound for Mackinac Island to survey the
town lots and various private claims in the region which antedated American
independence.!5 They arrived at Mackinac August 12 and after several days Nuttall
was again fortunate in being able to join a party of the Pacific Fur Company headed
for the Columbia River via St. Louis. His travel with the Astorians took him to Green
Bay for two weeks, where he was impressed with the Indian use of maple sugar and

134 full-scale biography of Nuttall is by Graustein (1967; see pp. 38-77 for his 1810-1811
travels). An earlier account is by Pennell (1936). Nuttall’s previously unpublished diary for 1810
was presented by Graustein (1951). For a full bibliography on Nuttall, see Stuckey (1968). Only a
brief summary of his life is given here, for the details are now readily accessible and nothing
original can be added

14Graustein (1967, p. 50).

150n the i importance of Greely’s surveys in the new territory of Michigan, see M. M. Quaife,
Detroit Biographies: Aaron Greeley, Burton Hist. Coll. Leafl. 5: 49—64 (1927). He also surveyed
the only private claim in Cheboygan County in 1810 and his description (with his name spelled
“Greely’’) is reproduced in Judy Ranville & Nancy Campbell, Memories of Mackinaw (Mackinaw
City Public Library & Woman’s Club, 1976) p. 25.

5

wild-rice, and thence up the Fox River and by a short portage to the Wisconsin River
and the Mississippi. Returning eventually to New Orleans from his western travels,
Nuttall shipped his specimens and notes to Barton and sailed for his home in England
in December of 1811.

In 1815, the War of 1812 having just been concluded, Nuttall returned to
Philadelphia. Three years later, he published The Genera of North American Plants,
and a Catalogue of the Species, to the Year 1817. This strictly American production
achieved international acclaim for Nuttall and was a remarkable accomplishment for
one who had spent scarcely more than six years in this country. According to
tradition, he set much of the type himself.!

There are no entries in Nuttall’s diary between his departure from Detroit July 29,
1810, and his arrival in Wisconsin on August 26. But we know from his Genera that
his days on the Lakes were profitable. Altogether, Nuttall mentioned about 60 species
as specifically occurring around the Great Lakes, at least a third of them described as
new to science, including Amorpha canescens (leadplant) from the Fox River of
Wisconsin and westward, Orchis huronensis (= Habenaria hyperborea, tall northern
green orchid) from islands of Lakes Michigan and Huron, Melanthium glaucum (=
Zigadenus, white camas) from a number of localities, and others. Chief among these
were three species described as new to science from the vicinity of Michilimackinac:
Iris lacustris, a dwarf species named for the lakes and endemic to the shores of
northern Lakes Michigan and Huron; TYanacetum huronense, a large-headed tansy
named for Lake Huron but in addition to the sandy shores of the northern Great
Lakes now known also from the Hudson Bay region and the north Atlantic and Pacific
coasts; and Rubus parviflorus, a misnomer regarding flower size, the tasty thimbleberry
in fruit, occurring in the northern Great Lakes region, the Black Hills of South Dakota,
and quite widely in the West—a classic example of the disjunct cordilleran or western
element in our flora.

The species we know now as Lathyrus japonicus (or L. maritimus, the beach pea)
and Cakile edentula (sea rocket) were among the common beach plants Nuttall noted
but which, unlike the tansy, had already been described from ocean shores. He also
mentioned the little birdseye primrose, Primula mistassinica (which he called P.
farinosa), from the “calcareous gravelly shores of the islands of Lake Huron; around
Michilimakinak, Bois Blanc, and St. Helena, in the outlet of Lake Michigan,” ad-
mitting he had not seen it in flower; Linnaea borealis (twinflower), “abundant in the
shady pine forests of Lake Huron”; Polygala paucifolia (fringed polygala), forming
“almost exclusive carpets of great extent in the Pine forests of Lake Huron”; and
many others which likewise were not new to science but which make clear that
Thomas Nuttall deserves credit as being the first botanist to have seen and recognized
in his published work many of the most distinctive plants of our northern forests and
shores. His collections would be the first scientific ones from this region, but most of
them were apparently lost.!7 His travels never brought him to the Great Lakes region
again after 1810.

In 1818, the year that Nuttall’s Genera was published, Illinois was admitted to the
Union and Michigan Territory was extended to include the land north of Illinois and
west of Lake Michigan as far as the Mississippi River—in other words, to include what

16See the useful “Editor’s Introduction” by Joseph Ewan in the 1971 Hafner reprint of Nuttall’s
Genera.
17Stuckey (1967).

6

later became Wisconsin and much of Minnesota. Since 1813, Lewis Cass had been
governor of Michigan Territory, which had been separated from Indiana in 1805, and
he became increasingly anxious to learn about this large area and make peace with the
Indians, some of whom still bore friendly feelings toward the British after the War of
1812. Born in New Hampshire in 1782 and raised in Ohio, Cass came to Detroit with
the Ohio militia at the beginning of the War of 1812. He considered General Hull, then
governor of the territory, to be a traitor for surrendering Detroit and testified at his
subsequent court-martial. President Madison soon named Cass governor and henceforth
he was regarded as a Michigan man; he maintained his home in Detroit—the territorial
capital—throughout his years of government service.!8 It was Cass—always recognized
as a scholar in his views—who led the first government-sponsored, scientifically oriented
expedition into the upper Great Lakes.!9

November 18, 1819, Governor Cass wrote to Secretary of War John C.
Calhoun, suggesting an expedition to the Lake Superior-Upper Mississippi region
which would “‘well accord with that zeal for inquiries of this nature which has recently
marked the administration of the War Department.” He pointed out: “The country
upon the southern shore of Lake Superior, and upon the water communication
between that lake and the Mississippi, has been but little explored, and its natural
features are imperfectly known. We have no correct topographical delineation of it,

18For a recent biography of Lewis Cass, see Dunbar (1970). Following 18 years as governor of
Michigan Territory, Cass served as secretary of war, minister to France, U.S. senator from Michigan,
and secretary of state. It was he who wrote the state motto of Michigan, Si quaeris peninsulam

fulfilled, but he was the nominee of the Democratic Party in 1848; not until 1976 was another
Michigan man nominated for the presidency by a major party (the other party, but with equal
success).

197 t complete account of this expedition is in the thoroughly documented edition of

Schoolnet? s Narrative by Williams (1953). Brief summaries are in Meisel (1926, 2: 400—404) and
Rodgers (1942, pp. 63—66).

Distribution of sea rocket, Cakile edentula, in the al Lakes region— Bik of beh species
restricted to the shores of this region but which also occur on ocean shor From e & Voss
1963, p. 107; half circles represent reliable reports; full eae represent seis tnSte examin ned.)

fj

and the little information we possess relating to it has been derived from the reports of
the Indian traders.” Cass concluded: “I am not competent to speculate upon the
natural history of the country through which we may pass. Should this object be
deemed important, I request that some person acquainted with zoology, botany, and
mineralogy may be sent to join me.”29 There were reports of copper to investigate
and treaties to be concluded with the Indians for certain of their lands; some
understanding of what the British might be doing and what influence they still had on
the Indians would be useful to the Government.

Calhoun was convinced of the merits of the proposed expedition and on January
14, 1820, directed Cass to proceed with the plans which, in fact, he had already begun
to implement. In February, Calhoun appointed Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, then age 27,
to the position of mineralogist of the expedition. His salary was $1.50 per day.?!
Schoolcraft had learned the glass industry in his youth in New York state and in 1819
published an account of the lead mines of Missouri, which brought him to the
attention of Calhoun. It was his appointment to the Cass expedition which first
brought Schoolcraft to his adopted state of Michigan, where Cass had him appointed in
1822 as Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie, where he served until the agency was
combined in 1832 with the one at Mackinac, where he continued until 1841.

Captain David Bates Douglass (1790—1849),22 an 1813 Yale graduate and since
1815 assistant professor of natural philosophy in the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point, was appointed to prepare a map and serve as scientist to the expedition in all
fields except those assigned to Schoolcraft. As Cass wrote him: “The astronomical &
topographical observations will of course be made by you, and the departments of
zoology & botany will require as much of your observation as you may be able to
bestow upon them.”23 As the first person assigned by the Federal government to
collect plants around the northern Great Lakes, Douglass should rate a prominent place
in our history, but his specimens are not numerous. He reported after the expedition:
“The region in which the greater part of our journey has been performed is not one
which presents any considerable variety of Botanical specimens. I have however formed
an Herbarium of such as offered.”24 Douglass’ heart seems not to have been in
botany! John Torrey of New York, the leading botanist in the country, had sent him
instructions on making specimens before the trip, but as Douglass wrote afterwards to
Benjamin Silliman (his former professor at Yale): “I must beg leave to observe, in the
first place that the collection of plants was made by a person, who, besides not being a
professed botanist, was almost constantly engaged with other objects of research. The
formation of an Herbarium, requiring much leisure and frequent attention, could
scarcely be expected, under such circumstances, and would not have been undertaken,
except in the exigency of having no professed botanist attached to the Expedition.”’25

The specimens were sent to Torrey, who published an account in volume 4 of
Silliman’s American Journal of Science and Arts (1821). I have encountered some of

20Quoted by Schoolcraft (1855, pp. 27-31); Williams (1953, pp. 302—305); Jackman et al. (1969,
pp. 114-117).

21w. w. Folwell, History of Minnesota (Minn. Hist. Soc., 1921), 1: 102.

220n David Bates Douglass, see Stuart (1871, pp. 199-221); Dexter (1912, pp. 550-553);
Jackman et al. (1969, pp. xiv—xxii).

23Quoted by Williams (1953, p. 311).

24Quoted by Williams (1953, pp. 385—386); Jackman et al. (1969, pp. 120—121).

25Quoted in Torrey (1821, p. 57); Rodgers (1942, p. 65); Williams (1953, p. 395).

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m

10

Douglass’ specimens in the herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden, where
Torrey’s collections now reside; they are very scantily labeled. A few others, sent by
Torrey to Schweinitz, are in the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences,
Philadelphia.2® Schoolcraft published a narrative of the expedition in 1821, organized
chronologically, with dates; and Douglass’ journal was published recently, though with
careless and often erroneous botanical annotations.27 Since there are dates with some
species in the Torrey list, it is sometimes possible to connect a specific locality to a
certain plant, especially if the label bears a date. Observations on the flora and general
vegetation occur throughout the accounts of Schoolcraft and Douglass.

Schoolcraft and Douglass arrived in Detroit at midnight on May 8, on the first
run of the season from Buffalo of the famous steamship, Walk-in-the-Water. (At
Buffalo, Douglass apparently collected the type material of the spring cress which bears
his name: Cardamine douglassii Britton.) Much work needed to be done to prepare for
departure; the supplies needed for a summer in the wilderness amounted to several
tons, for there were 40 or more persons in the party, including soldiers, Indians, and
voyageurs. On May 24 the group departed from Detroit in three birchbark canoes
made by Saginaw Indians. These were not little recreational canoes: they were 30 or
more feet long and capable of carrying about four tons each. But they were not the
safest vehicles for keeping specimens dry! As quoted in a letter from Douglass to
Silliman, accompanying Torrey’s list of the plants, ‘a part of the collection was injured
by an accident on the Ouisconsin, in which my canoe was very nearly filled with water
before it could be got ashore. The consequence of which was that nearly all the plants
in one case were completely spoiled before I was able to dry them.”

The expedition returned to Detroit, with all personnel safe and sound after more
than 4,000 miles of travel, almost four months after leaving. It took 14 days to travel
from Detroit to Mackinac. Every night they put ashore and unloaded all the tons of
cargo. There were apparently a few moments for botanizing, as a number of species are
mentioned in the Torrey list for the shores of Lake Huron. Some, such as the yellow
lady-slipper, Cypripedium calceolus, listed for “Presque Isle, June Sth,’ bear dates
when Schoolcraft’s narrative and the journals of others note that the party was
detained by strong winds. The expedition stayed six days at Mackinac Island, getting
an additional canoe, laying in supplies, and making observations. Here they noted the
dwarf Jris lacustris, with the comment in Torrey’s catalog: “Mr. Nuttall discovered this

26Rodgers (1942, p. 65); Stuckey (1978a).
27Jackman et al. (1969); extracts were earlier published by Williams (1953, App. E, pp. 366—382).
: :

Other journals of the expedition were also kept. James Duane Doty

th, James Duane Doty Frontier
Promoter (State Hist. Soc. Wis., Madison, 1954. 472 pp.). Charles C. Trowbridge, likewise 20 and
living with Doty in Detroit, was employed as an assistant to Douglass. His journal was published in
Minn. Hist. 23: 126-148; 233-252; 328—348 (1942) and by Williams (1953, App. G, pp.
462-498). Trowbridge became a prominent citizen of Detroit, which he saw grow to a large city
before his death in 1883; he served in many charitable, business, and civic capacities, including

Stevens T. Mason, who at the age of 19 had become acting governor upon Cass’ removal to
Washington in oO become secretary of war. Trowbridge was the first secretary of the
University of Michigan, 1837—1838.

28Quoted also by Williams (1953, p. 395).

—
oo
Ww
—

1]

Iris in the same place where it was found by Capt. Douglass—on the gravelly shores of
the Islands of Lake Huron.” Traveling two years after the publication of Nuttall’s
Genera (in which this iris was first described) and 18 years after Nuttall’s trip, the Cass
expedition had one botanical advantage in its earlier season, so that some species, such
as the endemic dwarf iris, might still be seen in flower. Similarly, of the little primrose
found by Douglass on the shores of Lake Huron, Torrey says: “Mr. Nuttall found it in
the same place, but not in flower.” The journey from Mackinac to the “Soo” took
two days, and three were spent dealing with the Indians there, including a treaty
ceding to the United States 16 square miles of land and making possible the
establishment of Fort Brady—now the site of Lake Superior State College.

Over two weeks were spent along the south shore of Lake Superior, including two
days passing the Grand Sable Dunes and the Pictured Rocks, both of which features
greatly impressed the travelers—and nearly 150 years later sufficiently impressed
Congress to establish for them the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Dr. Alexander
Wolcott, Indian agent at Chicago and physician to the expedition, “with considerable
labour ascended these sandy eminences,” wrote Schoolcraft of the dunes.2? Another
member of the party wrote: “one of our Indians whom curiosity induced to ascend
them had much the appearance of a child when running on the summit of the hills,
and when he returned to the canoe he was almost exhausted with fatigue.”’3° Douglass
expressed the general sentiment regarding the next landmark: “I cannot think any
scenery I ever visited, even including Niagara Falls and its vicinity, is to be compared
for grandeur and sublimity to the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior.”3! Governor Cass,
duly impressed with his first view of this part of his domain, wrote to Secretary of
War Calhoun: “Two of the most sublime natural objects in the United States, the
Grand Sable, and the pictured rocks are to be found upon this coast. The former is an
immense hill of sand extending for some miles along the Lake, of great elevation &
precipitous ascent. The latter is an unbroken wall of rocks, rising perpendicularly from
the Lake to the height of 300 feet assuming every grotesque & fanciful appearance,
and presenting to the eye of the passenger a spectacle as tremendous as the
imagination can conceive, or the reason itself can well sustain.” 32 Apparently the
members of the expedition were too overcome by the scenery to collect any specimens
from this area, but later explorers made up for their neglect.

Near the Keweenaw Peninsula, Schoolcraft commented: “‘we here first noticed a
creeping plant called kinni-kinick by the Indians, which is used as a substitute for
tobacco.... The Indians prepare it by drying the leaf over a moderate fire, and
bruising it between the fingers so that it, in some degree, resembles cut tobacco. In
this state it is smoked, and is very mild and pleasant.”’33 e know the plant as
bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), and Torrey’s catalog of Douglass’ collections also
refers to smoking it. Late in June the expedition crossed the Keweenaw Peninsula
including its boggy portage where a ship canal was under construction 50 years later.
Douglass noted several bog plants here including pitcherplant (Sarracenia purpurea) and
the showy lady-slipper (Cypripedium reginae). The ubiquitous false toadflax (Comandra

29Schoolcraft (1821, p. 148).

30James Doty’s journal for June 20; see Williams (1953, p. 471).
31 Jackman et al. (1969, p. 49).

32Quoted by Williams (1953, p. 325).

33§choolcraft (1821, pp. 161—162)..

12

umbellata) was noted at Keweenaw and said to be “Used by the Indians and traders in
fevers.” 34

How did this official Government expedition celebrate the Fourth of July,
1820—the 44th anniversary of American independence? There was an unfavorable
wind, and until 2:00 they stayed on land at the mouth of the Sandy River, on the
Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior. The only collection of Douglass’ listed by Torrey
for this date is the beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus), which is known not only from all
five of the Great Lakes but also Lake Champlain, Lake Winnipeg, and the northern
shores of the Atlantic and Pacific—as well as the Old World. Strictly a shoreline plant,
it is representative of a group of species that would naturally be seen by explorers
traveling by water, but that no one would find inland.35 Nuttall had said it was
“Abundant on the shores of Lakes Erie, Huron and Michigan.” On July 5, the
expedition reached Fond du Lac—the present site of Duluth—and prepared to go up
the St. Louis River and across to the Mississippi. They never did reach the source of
the Father of Waters, for it was too late in the season for navigating the rivers. But
they arrived at Upper Red Cedar Lake, later renamed Cass Lake, and then returned
downstream to the Wisconsin River, whence they portaged to the Fox River, reaching
Green Bay on August 20. Wild-rice was found “‘in the greatest luxuriance and plenty in
Fox river” and another grass was described as new by Torrey from “the banks of Fox
River, &c”’ (Panicum longisetum, now considered a form of Echinochloa walteri, one
of the wild millets). Some of the party returned to Detroit directly from Green Bay,
while the rest continued down the west side of Lake Michigan to Chicago; Governor
Cass went from there overland to Detroit, leaving Schoolcraft and Douglass to continue
around the east side of Lake Michigan, back to Mackinac, and down to Detroit, which
they reached on September 23—one day short of four months after their departure.

Although explorations by canoe were rugged adventures, we should remember that
conditions even in the territorial capital at the time were primitive by modern
standards: In 1820, Detroit (population about 1,500) had steamboat service from
Buffalo once every two weeks or so (except of course in winter)—but there was no
railroad, no telegraph or telephone, no stagecoach service, no daily newspaper (though
there was a weekly one), and no daily mail (in 1817 the mail began to come fairly
regularly from Washington via Cleveland once every three weeks, by horse and
rider”® ).

It is now time for a brief digression on medical men. Many early physicians were,
of course, also accomplished botanists. These included some Army surgeons, one of
whom was Zina Pitcher (1797—1872).37 A native of New York state, Pitcher
graduated in medicine from Middlebury College, in Vermont, in 1822. This was during
the period (1817—1824) that Amos Eaton, who was to become famous as a scientist

34Torrey (1821, p. 60).

SSee Guire & Voss (1963). Because of their restricted distribution, several such species are
considered “threatened,” including the /ris and the Tanacetum described by Nuttall (see Mich. Bot.
16: 104 & 106. 1977).
36Farmer (1890, p. 880).
370n Zina Pitcher, see Natl. Cycl. Am. Biogr. 12: 214-215 (1904); Kelly (1914, pp. 145—150);
Connor in Kelley & Burrage (1920, pp. 917-918); Phalen in Dict. Am. Biogr. 14: 636—637
(1934); Bidlack (1962, pp. 12—14); Whittaker (1972). There is a tribute in the middle of the front
page of the Detroit Free Press for April 6, 1872, the day after Pitcher’s death: “Death of Dr. Zina
Pitcher. A Good Man Gone to His Rest.”

Dr. Zina Pitcher (1797—1872). (Undated and unsigned eee presented to the University of
Michigan in 1915 and currently in the care of the Medical School.)

and educator, ‘“‘wandered through the New England states and New York”38 lecturing
on botany. Through such lectures, Eaton became Pitcher’s instructor in botany. 39 For
the first eight years after receiving his M.D., Pitcher was stationed as an Army surgeon

“in the yet unbroken wilderness of the territory of Michigan.”49 He served at Fort
Saginaw, Fort Brady (Sault Ste. Marie) from 1826 to 1828, and Fort Gratiot (Port

38McAllister gai p. 180). The Rensselaer School, with which Eaton’s name is so closely

associated, was founded until 1824; Pitcher could not have studied with Eaton there, as

suggested in some aersh ies.

39Eaton, America’s “first great teacher of oe history,” had also been Torrey” s first instructor
I

n
ae ee near 1900; Stuckey 19780)
40Kelly (1914, p. 146).

14

Huron), before going to Arkansas and Virginia. He accumulated a large herbarium
which was acquired in 1880 by Isaac C. Martindale, whose collection was ultimately
purchased by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1964 for the National Arbor-
etum.4! In 1836, nearly 15 years after being commissioned by Secretary of War
Calhoun, Pitcher resigned his commission and returned to Michigan, where he practiced
medicine in Detroit and became one of the leading citizens of the state.

In 1828, while he was stationed in Michigan, Pitcher had joined with Lewis Cass
and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in founding the Historical Society of Michigan. Upon his
return to the state, he was named by Governor Mason—although of the opposing
party—to be a member of the first Board of Regents of the University of Michigan. He
served as an influential regent until 1852, when the post became elective, and is
credited with being the founder of the medical school, on whose faculty he served
1851—1872. When the American Medical Association met in Detroit in 1856, it elected
as its 10th president the president of the Michigan State Medical Society and former
mayor of Detroit, Dr. Zina Pitcher.

A number of plants have been named for Pitcher, including a handsome thistle
with cream-flowered heads, Cirsium pitcheri, which grows only on the sandy shores of
Lakes Michigan and Huron, with a single area on Lake Superior. It is now considered
a “threatened species.”42 Torrey proposed the epithet, based on material found by
Pitcher “on the great sand banks of Lake Superior,” so it was probably while Pitcher
was stationed at Fort Brady that he found this plant; the “great sand banks” can only
be the Grand Sable Dunes, so admired by the Cass expedition and to this day the only
place on Lake Superior where Pitcher’s thistle is known to grow. However, this is not
the type locality, thanks to one of those legal maneuvers into which the conventions
of nomenclature can lead us. Torrey was not the first to publish a name for this
thistle, which was actually first described by Amos Eaton in the fifth edition of his
Manual of Botany (1829), with a clear statement that although it was first found by
Pitcher on Lake Superior, ‘My specimen was collected by Dr. E. James, at Lake
Huron, from which I made this description.”

Edwin James (1797—1861)43 graduated from Middlebury College in 1816, six
years before Pitcher, and then studied medicine with his older brothers in Albany, New
York. Already possessed of an interest in botany, he attended lectures by Eaton in
Albany and doubtless elsewhere (including the Troy Lyceum of Natural History).
Through Eaton, James became acquainted with John Torrey. While the Cass expedition
was exploring the Lake Superior region in 1820, Dr. James was accompanying Major
Stephen H. Long’s first expedition, to the Rocky Mountains, as botanist and geologist
as well as surgeon After writing up the results of Long’s expedition, James applied for
formal instatement as assistant surgeon, U.S.A., and this was approved by the Senate in
January, 1823. His service was mostly at Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien) on the
upper Mississippi until 1826, when he received orders late in the fall to go to Fort
Brady (18th in his list of 20 posts in order of preference!).44 Knowing that ice would
prevent him from reaching his assignment before spring, he went by boat to Albany

41Meyer & Elsasser (1973, P. 382-383). meine sent some Pitcher specimens to Schweinitz, and
collections of his are to be found in various herbar

42See Mich. Bot. 16: 106 (1977).

430n Edwin James, see Pammel (1907-1908); Rowe in Kelly & Burrage (1920, pp. 606—607);
Ewan (1950, pp. cs 20; 237-238); Voss (1956, pp. 24—26); Benson (1968).

44Benson (1968, pp. 158—160).

15

and visited there and in Philadelphia, where he was married. Before navigation opened
on the Lakes, he received a change in orders: the assistant surgeon at Fort Mackinac,
Dr. Richard Satterlee, was going on leave, and James took his place from May 23 until
the end of August,45 after which he proceeded to his original assignment at Fort
Brady, where he remained until the spring of 1832 (thus overlapping for a year
Pitcher’s assignment to Fort Brady).4® While at this post, he became a charter member
of the Historical Society of Michigan, founded in 1828 with two other citizens of
Sault Ste. Marie, Zina Pitcher and H. R. Schoolcraft, as prime movers.

The type specimen of Pitcher’s thistle, then, was probably collected by Edwin
James during the summer of 1827 at (or near) Mackinac Island, in the north end of
Lake Huron. Presumably James collected other plants there and at Fort Brady. 47 In
1832 he was assigned to Albany, New York, and the next year he was dismissed from
the Army. He had become interested in Indian dialects while stationed on the frontier,
in the temperance movement, in abolitionism, and in other subjects, and spent the last
quarter-century of his life in Iowa, ending his days as something of a recluse.

he Cass expedition had never reached the true source of the Mississippi, and
Schoolcraft could not forget a hope of achieving that goal—even though he had written
from Vernon, New York, to Douglass in November of 1820: “I have scarcely stirred out
of the house since my return, and have endeavoured in the comforts of a christian
country to forget the canoes, the rocks, and headwinds of those ‘bloody Lakes. 72°48
Settled in Michigan as Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie in 1822, married in 1823 to
Jane Johnston (the well educated daughter of a prominent fur trader and grand-
daughter of a Chippewa chief), and member of the territorial legislature 1828—1832,
Schoolcraft became increasingly involved in Indian history and in Indian affairs on Lake
Superior and in Wisconsin and Minnesota. 49 His opportunity for the long-awaited
exploration came late in 1830, when Governor Cass, under directions from the War
Department, requested Schoolcraft to endeavor to end the hostilities between the
Chippewa and the Sioux in the Minnesota-Wisconsin area, when a negotiated boundary
line between the tribes was in no way marked and tension was mounting. Schoolcraft
made plans for an expedition the following summer. In addition to a small detachment
of troops and the usual Indian guides and such persons, the party included School-
craft’s brother-in-law, George Johnston,99 and a physician who was to become
extraordinarily prominent in Michigan affairs—Douglass Houghton

45To place the times in historical perspective, it may be noted that the celebrated surgeon William
Beaumont had just left Fort Mackinac two years previous, in 1825.
46For dates of James’ and Pitcher’s assignments, I am aes to investigations of Rogers
McVau the National Archives and reported in a letter me March 5, 1956. See also the
account of James’ rivalry with Schoolcraft while at Fort ert aa on 1970, ‘from Benson 1968).
47Specimens sent by James to others, such as Torrey (whose herbarium is at the New York
Botanical Garden), should be preserved, but none of the thistle is in Eaton’s herbarium (see Voss
1956) and no material of it collected by James or Pitcher is at the New York Botanical Garden
(according to C. W. Laskowski, who searched for me in 1964). James’ own collections and papers
were burned after the death of his wife in 1854 (Pammel 1908; see also Benson 1968, p. 334).
48Quoted by Williams (1953, p. 353).
49For a recent discussion of Schoolcraft’s role in history, see Marsden (1976).
50On the family of George Johnston, brother of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, grandson of a leading
Indian chief in Wisconsin, see Mich. Hist. 54: 108-121 (1970).

Chapter 2.
THE HOUGHTON ERA

Douglass Houghton (1809—1845)°! grew up in New York state and received his
A.B. in 1829 from the Rensselaer School in Troy, where he greatly impressed the
senior professor, the well known botanist and educator, Amos Eaton. Eaton asked him
to remain as an assistant and in February of 1830 he was appointed adjunct to the
junior professor in chemistry and natural history, with expectations of a higher
position.©2 With a promising career ahead of him, what led Douglass Houghton to
Michigan?

In the fall of 1830, Detroit, then a prospering community of some two thousand
citizens and the capital of the territory of Michigan, wanted to improve its cultural
opportunities. A newspaper and several prominent citizens of the state, including Lewis
Cass and Zina Pitcher, supported a proposal to bring a lecturer who would talk on, and
demonstrate, science. Amos Eaton had written that someone from his institution could
be obtained and when the funds were subscribed, Lucius Lyon, the Michigan territorial
delegate in Congress, stopped to visit Eaton on his way home from Washington and
closed negotiations. So it was on Eaton’s recommendation that young Houghton, less
than two months after his 21st birthday, arrived in Detroit, allegedly with 10 cents
and a letter of recommendation in his pocket. This was in November of 1830, just
before the ice put an end to navigation for the season. His lectures that winter on
chemistry, natural history, and mechanical philosophy were an astounding success and
Houghton became one of the most popular men in Detroit, acquainted with the
leading citizens. These included Schoolcraft, who was then serving in the legislature
and who wrote later about plans for his expedition:

While at Detroit during na winter, I had invited Dr. Douglass Houghton to accompany
me to vaccinate the Indians. He was a man of pleasing manners and deportment, small of

conduct an expedition into the fdtan: Dies, without collecting data over and above
the public duties, to understand its natural hist tory 53
The expedition left Sault Ste. Marie by canoe June 25 and returned 72 days later,
on September 4, having traveled an estimated 2,300 miles. Houghton collected
extensively and sent many plants to John Torrey, with whom he corresponded often.
One letter from Houghton to Torrey, dated at Fredonia, New York, March 20, 1832,
gives something of the flavor of his work:

S1A biography of Houghton, with references to previous accounts, is by Rintala (1954). See also
Kelly & Burrage (1920, pp. 564—565); — sei Merrill in Dict. Am. Biogr. 9: 254-255
(1932); Wallin (1970); and numerous other sket

52Nason sie p. 187). Until 1835, there were only two professors, “senior” (Eato n) and
“junior,” the institution, which became ‘“‘The Rensselaer Institute” in 1832 and ‘Rensselaer
Heaps Mem institute” in i 1861.

S3Schoolcraft (1851, p. 350).

17

ome time in November last I received, through hands of H. R. Schoolcraft
Esqr. of the Saut Ste Marie, notice that you had made some requests respecting the
plants which were collected during the expedition of ae past summer. He also informed
me that he had written you upon the same subject.

the expedition referred to I acted as naturalist, and have now the pi
collection of plants, as well as parts of the other collections in my possession. You ar
undoubtedly well aware of the numerous difficulties which are presented in cea

James, of the U.S. Army, I was enabled to solve some of my difficulties...

Later in the same letter, Houghton mentions that ‘‘Eaton’s Manual Sth Edition was the
work which I used in the field’; and in a letter to Schoolcraft dated April 3, 1832,
Houghton stated ‘“‘as I look for several new botanical works, in a few days, I will have
some enjoyment in burying myself among my plants.”55 On May 12 he wrote
Schoolcraft that he had spent “‘several days engaged in preparing to secure what plants
may be collected from the effects of water....I have heard from Torrey & have sent
him a suit of Plants.’°© There can be no doubt that Houghton was an accomplished
botanist in addition to his geological and other abilities. Schoolcraft noted at the
Mauvaise [Bad] River in Wisconsin: “In the ascent of this stream, Dr. Houghton has
collected about two hundred plants”’>’ and later he stated that Houghton “was a
zealous botanist, and a discriminating geologist.”58 But he was not immune from the
same problems that Nuttall and Douglass had evidently had, of keeping dry specimens
from loss and damage on a long canoe voyage.

54The original of this letter is in the Torrey papers at the New York Botanical Garden; a photostat
is in the Mic chigan Historical Collections, sinha of Michigan, Sar an appended list of
plants found in 1831. This list was dismissed by Mason when quoting the letter (1958, pp.
294-295) as having “‘little historical seeney sa stated that the en could be found in
Houghton’s published list (1834), but this is not true, for the published list makes no distinction
between 1831 and 1832 collections. This letter by Houghton pr resu umably resulted from a letter
which Schoolcraft received from Torrey early in October of 1831, in which he stated: ““You know
that I have long devoted much of my tim he sei sige of N. Rees botany, and that I am
. : ‘

botany, I should esteem it a peculiar favor to have the examination of the specimens. > (Schoolcraft
1851, p. 397) On June 24, 1832, Houghton wrote to his brother Richard: “I received another

hat

supported by the w York botanist. This will give me fresh courage to push the subject this
season.” (Quoted . Sesce 1958, p. 298).

S5Quoted by Mason (1958, p. 296) from letter in Schoolcraft papers, Library of Congress.
56Quoted by Mason (1958, p. 297) from letter in Schoolcraft papers, Library of Congress.
57§choolcraft (1851, p. 365).

58Schoolcraft (1851, p. 429).

S9Rodgers (1942, p. 103) quotes a letter from Torrey to Schoolcraft, ess 5, 1832, heel
after the second paragraph a passage kindly suplied me by R. L. Stuckey: “Dr. H. sent me some
the more interesting free which he brought with him last. ae —but he Br that the best part of
your collections were destroyed by getting wet.’ The label on a specimen (of on albida) sent
to Torrey makes clear the problem, as well as Houghton’s dedication to bota : “The probability

a collect a great number of specimens. But only two or three days after this my canoe bilged, &
ll the plants I had collected for several days were thoroughly wetted. Among them was this plant,

18

For a week or more before the expedition departed from the Soo, Houghton
collected in that vicinity, both in Canada and in Michigan. The route then led the
party along the south shore of Lake Superior, and many of the same sights were seen
as had fascinated the Cass expedition 11 years earlier. At Grand Sable, Houghton
collected Cirsium pitcheri—which had just been described in the Sth edition of Eaton’s
Manual, the one Houghton had with him. On June 30 the expedition passed the
Pictured Rocks, where Houghton collected crowberry, Empetrum nigrum—to this day
one of the few locations for this species on the south shore of Lake Superior.69 In
Wisconsin, the party spent three days at La Pointe (Madeline Island), where George
Johnston was in charge of Indian affairs,°! and it then ascended the Bad River and

& I was only able to preserve three or four imperfect specimens of it.” (Label transcribed by C. W.
Laskowski, Jan. 1 .) No duplicate of this collection is in the University of Michigan Herbarium,
but other species labeled by Houghton from the same locality (Yellow River, Wisconsin) are dated
August 1, 1831.

60See Mich. Bot. 3: 35—38 (1964). This is now considered a “threatened species” in Michigan (see
Mich. Bot. 16: 107. 1977).

61Melancthon Woolsey, a member of the expedition, began a long letter to Mrs. Schoolcraft from
La Pointe, July 17, 1831: “Instead of a sand bank for a writing desk, I am now seated by the side

g

Three volumes of Douglass Houghton’s first herbarium, begun while he was a student at the
Rensselaer School in Troy, New York (see footnote 62). A few plants from the 1831 and 1832
expeditions with Schoolcraft are included, such as the specimen of Pitcher’s thistle in the open
volume, collected at Grand Sable in 1831.

19

portaged to the Namekagon and St. Croix rivers of the Mississippi system. The type
material of a sedge which Torrey later named Cyperus houghtonii was collected August
4 on a portage near the Namekagon. Many of the specimens from the 1831 expedition
are from the Mississippi drainage in Wisconsin, although some are from the prairies of
the Fox River on the return trip.

Like the Cass expedition of 1820, Schoolcraft’s 1831 tour had to give up any
attempt to reach the source of the Mississippi because of the low state of the rivers so
late in the season; and hence, while the official purposes were accomplished among the
Indians, the story is not a very dramatic exploring narrative and Schoolcraft said
relatively little of it in most of his subsequent literary productions. 3 He knew that he
must try again to reach the true source of the Mississippi and in 1832 he was suc-
cessful. An exploring expedition per se could hardly have been sponsored by the
Office of Indian Affairs (which was under the War Department). But he convinced the
Office to send him out again to extend peace, to investigate the condition of the fur
trade, and to vaccinate and compile statistics on the Indians. Lewis Cass had gone to

herbarium) a the University of Michigan teagan, which possesses Houghton’s ei
five-volume Dues ee eter in ze youth in New York but containing some of the 1831 and 1832
specimens, and sesses numerous sheets from the Schoolcraft expeditions mounted and filed

in the usual manner. = Duplicates were widely exchanged by Houghton and others, and are found in
a number of herbar

63Much valuable information on the 1831 a ene including some botanical notes, usually with
oS Boeri is in Schoolcraft (1851); Mason (1958) includes several relevant documents. From
the extant specimens and widely scattered accounts of the expedition, I have been attempting to
cine the botanical results so as to provide localities and dates for as many as possible of the
collections.

= ri coed G HI B6P)| byte oe
: MSE oe

Seg

i —_= 6 6! as: :
DOUGLASS HOUGHTON vant
oo vs ‘ pie san: aa ae HK jw ey
UU @tey te a4a, 2
A OF Fey | Mth. Akh im SS Sag Px Tate
“tp PoC. Seatrata
Maw ee oe ae aa Ay dy Le. Alay SIR

ate ze
e ae i june Stee irate Jgferier
Crdice of / Mg. ‘ ‘
Tak 5 1/932 Ag M4 Gu > i ie
_ wig Jam Dg wvrrds : ey

‘ -“?e - .

Above: Two labels in Douglass Houghton’s hand from his herbarium as shown on p. 18. Below left:
Label on an isotype of Carex nk igen written by Houghton’s assistant, Bela Hubbard. Below

right: Label in Dennis Cooley’s hand on a specimen collected by William A. Burt in 1847 in T46N,
R41W, then in Ontonagon County, Michigan (see p. 26). (All labels slightly reduced.

20

Washington to become secretary of war in 1831 so his blessing on the expedition was
presumably not hard to obtain. Again, Douglass Houghton was a member of the party,
at the pay of $3.00 per day,®* with an official duty to vaccinate the Indians. The
itinerary and botanical collections have been listed for the 1832 trip, about which
much more has been published.

The 1832 route was much the same along the south shore of Lake Superior except
that it went all the way to Fond du Lac and followed the St. Louis River into
Minnesota. But an earlier start (June 7 from the Soo) meant more navigable rivers.
This is the better known expedition of Schoolcraft’s, for on a lucky Friday the 13th
of July, Schoolcraft, Houghton, and Lt. James Allen (in charge of the military escort
from Fort Brady) portaged across a rise of ground to what was christened Lake
Itasca.66 They spent three and a half hours there, collected several plants, and then
descended the Mississippi. The type material of Carex houghtoniana Torrey ex Dewey,
which Houghton recognized as a new species of sedge, was among the collections from
this long-sought location. Schoolcraft, describing the portage to what the Indians had
called Elk Lake, assured us that “Dr. Houghton carried a plant press”67 on. this
historic occasion. Collections were made in Wisconsin on the return trip, on which
they portaged from the St. Croix River to the Bois Brule, following it to Lake
Superior. Schoolcraft arrived at the Soo August 14 and Houghton followed on August
25. Specimens were again sent to Torrey, and duplicates distributed later to other
correspondents, including the Wisconsin naturalist, Increase A. Lapham (see next
chapter). Houghton sent a list of plants in a letter to Torrey November 24, 1832, as he
had done March 20 for the plants of the previous season.©8 No distinction in dates,
however, is made in the combined list that was published in Schoolcraft’s narrative .©9

Houghton returned for a few days late in November, 1832, to his home in
Fredonia, New York, where he had been licensed as a physician in 1831. He then
returned to Detroit, whence he wrote to Schoolcraft: “You will undoubtedly be a
little surprised to learn that I am now in Detroit, but probably not more than I am in
being here. My passage through Lake Huron was tedious beyond endurance; and so
long was I detained in consequence of it, that it became useless for me to proceed to
New York [to work with Torrey]. Under these circumstances, after having visited
Fredonia, | determined to engage in the practice of my profession, in this place, at
least until spring.’?9 Houghton quickly built up a large and successful practice and
was much beloved by his patients and other citizens, who called him the “Little

64Mason (1958, p. 138).

65Specimens in the University of Michigan Herbarium are itemized, with the itinerary, by
Rittenhouse & Voss (1962). The 1832 trip is related by Schoolcraft (1834, and somewhat
condensed 1855). The narrative was usefully republished, with abundant additional documentation
regarding the 1831 and 1832 expeditions, by Mason (1958).

6The superstitious should note that on the same Friday the 13th, Zina Pitcher (then far from the
Great Lakes, in Arkansas) was oo from assistant surgeon to surgeon, U.S. Army, with the
rank of major (Natl Cycl. Am

67Schoolcraft (1851, p. 412).

68The Riba letter, received by Torrey in a bundle of specimens, is in the Torrey papers at the
New York Botanical Garden; a photostat is in the Michigan Historical veiiaaeas The letter,
without the list of plants, is quoted by Mason (1958, p. 305); cf. note 54 abov

69 Houghton (1834).

70Schoolcraft (1851, pp. 429-430); cf. also Houghton’s letter of Nov. 24, 1832, to Torrey (note
68 above).

pA

Doctor”;7! he was active in civic affairs, lectured—and collected plants. But he soon
reduced his practice and in 1836 gave it up completely. He had accumulated large real
estate holdings and achieved sufficient wealth in land speculation that he was
financially independent for the rest of his brief career.

Michigan’s admission to the Union was official at noon on January 26, 1837, and
two events of considerable botanical significance for the state resulted—although
neither flourished to its full potential. One was establishment of the University in Ann
Arbor and the calling of its first professor; and the other was the action of the
legislature in creating a geological survey.

fifth meeting of the Board of Regents of the University, in November of
1837, a resolution proposed by Regent Schoolcraft was approved, that an agent visit
Europe to obtain apparatus and books, but no further action was taken. Schoolcraft
and Pitcher, two of the most influential regents, were regular scientific correspondents
of John Torrey’s and the secretary of the regents was a former student of his. It is
quite likely therefore that Torrey was the inspiration for Schoolcraft’s advice and also
for Asa Gray’s application to the University of Michigan early in 1838, even though
the institution existed only on paper. At first, the regents thought it premature to
begin selecting a faculty. But Stevens T. Mason, governor of the state, was so
impressed with Gray on a visit to New York in May that he determined to bring him
to Michigan. Douglass Houghton offered Gray a post with the new geological survey,
and Mason wrote him that a University position could be assured in addition. On July
17, Mason (who was ex officio a regent and served as president of the board)
presented a communication from Gray proposing a faculty appointment commencing
with a leave of absence for a trip to Europe. The regents then acted to make Asa
Gray, John Torrey’s young assistant, the first paid professor in the new university
(which had no significant continuity with the original “university” established in
Detroit in 1817).72

Gray visited Michigan in August of 1838, his only trip to the state, but he had
time to collect very few plants here. However, he was enthusiastic about the potential
of the University and proposed to obtain scientific apparatus and books on his
European trip. The regents settled upon his purchasing the nucleus of a library and
authorized $5000 for the purpose, as well as a salary of $1500.73 Gray’s advice was
clearly sought on scientific matters (he even hoped to bring Torrey to Michigan). He
arranged with George P. Putnam in London to purchase an excellent collection of
books, while he himself made valuable contacts with the leading botanists and

71Houghton’s height was 5 ft. 5 in.
ia a letter to William Darlington, August 2, 1838, John Torrey wrote: “Dr. Gray has been

d for an exten
probably go to Europe & return next spring. This will give him an opportunity of seeing all the
great botanists, & of examining the numerous herbaria which it is necessary to consult in order to
settle many of our doubtful plants. The Univ.Y of Michigan has very large funds, & it will probably

supplying me with the transcript of this letter, which seems not to have been previously quoted, in
the William Darlington papers, New York Hi soil Society.)

73Gray’ s connections with the University of Michigan have been presented by Bartlett (1941) and
Bidlack (1962, pp. 34—73). He did some botanizing at Ann Arbor the morning of Aug. 20, 1838
J. L. Gray 1893, 1: 81).

a2

institutions of Europe. For making possible this critical experience in Gray’s career, the
regents deserve some credit; and indeed Gray is identified as Professor of Botany in the
University of Michigan on the title page for volume | of Torrey and Gray’s great Flora
of North America, published 1838-1840. The regents asked him to serve without
salary beginning with the 1840—1841 year and he stayed in New York to work with
Torrey. In March of 1842 Gray was offered a professorship (at only $1000) at Harvard
and he tendered his resignation to the University of Michgian, which had just begun
actually to admit students that year. His illustrious career at Harvard is well known
and does not concern us here.

Meanwhile, back at the capital in Detroit,’ the state government had likewise
been getting organized in 1837. Two hours after Michigan became a state, a bill was
introduced in the legislature for a geological survey and this was approved on February
23—the first department of state government to be created by statute. It provided for
a “full and scientific description” of the state’s “rocks, soils and minerals, and of its
botanical and geological productions, together with specimens of the same.” Houghton
was named state geologist (the whole idea was his) and work commenced almost
immediately.

Dr. Abram Sager (1810—1877),’7 who had studied with Amos Eaton and was in
general practice in Detroit, was placed in charge of botanical and zoological work and
operated independently of Houghton, who also collected a few specimens himself. The
only roads were in the southernmost part of the state, and the localities of extant
specimens are all southern—but they were the first collections from the interior in
contrast to the lake shores. In 1838 the survey was reorganized and Houghton induced
Dr. John Wright (1811—1846),78 another former student (but non-graduate) of
Eaton’s at the Rensselaer School, to leave a “lucrative practice” of medicine in Troy,
New York, to become botanist for the survey. His assistant was George Bull, about
whom we know almost nothing except that Eaton named a plant for him in 1840:
Gymnandra bullii, now known as Besseya bullii or Wulfenia bullii, and also named
Synthyris houghtoniana by Bentham six years later—an uncommon member of the
snapdragon family (Scrophulariaceae) and now considered a “threatened species” in
Michigan.’? It was from the “prairies” of Michigan, but no type material seems to be

74The definitive biography of Gray, with full references, is by Dupree (1959).

75The capital was not moved to Lansing until 1847.

76The history of geological surveys in Michigan is presented in some detail by Merrill (1920, pp.

158—239, condensed from a manuscript by Alexander Winchell). For Houghton’s role, see Rintala

(1954) and Wallin (1970). Houghton’s reports and related documents were conveniently ea

by Fuller (1928).

770n Abram Sager (A. mers School 1831; M. D. Castleton Medical College, Vermont

1835), see Atkinson ea 59); Nason (1887, pp. 196—197); Huber (1903); Vaughan

(1905); Connor in Kelly & ae ae pp. 1013-—

78On John Wright (M. . Yale 1833) see Nason an p. 138) and Kelly & Burrage (1920, p.

ie nee (1970, p. 237) questions the year of Wright’s death, citing a letter from his

for ical partner, Thomas C. Brinsmade, to Abram Sager (Sager papers, Michigan Historical

Collections, Universi of Michigan). The letter is indeed clearly dated at Troy April 25, 1845, and

describes t’s acute bronchitis and lung hemorrhaging in ““November’’; under these conditions it
woul

published sources, including Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Yale Univer-
sity...1701—1892 (New Haven, 1892~—and later editions), give 1846 as the year of Wright’s
demise, and I conclude that Dr. Brinsmade’s pen slipped when he dated his letter 1845. He
mentioned to Sager that Wright “but a few minutes before he ceased breathing was talking
cheerfully about some scenes he had witness{ed] with yourself & Geo. Bull in Michigan.”

79See Mich. Bot. 16: 109 (1977).

23

extant. Many collections were made in 1838, again in the southern part of the state,
and a bare list of over 800 species (without locality data) was published in Wright’s
report in 1839. Wright offered a mild complaint about the legislative requirement to
collect in sets of 17:

The bulky apparatus necessary to be conveyed from place to place, during the excursions,
for the preservation of the plants in such extensive collections, and the requisite

eggs Houghton (1809-1845), from a painting by his brother-in-law, Alvah Bradish, showing
him at the Pictured Rocks with his pet spaniel. (Published by Bradish as frontispiece in Memoir of

Douglass Houghton, 1889.)

conveniences for drying and protecting them, render it impracticable to examine a ve ery
great extent of country, and particularly such portions of it as are unsettled, during a
single season . . .80

Wright and Sager, as botanical and zoological assistants respectively, resigned after
the 1838 season, in the face of financial panic in the state and reduced appropriations
for the survey. Wright returned to New York, to become professor of botany and
zoology at Rensselaer (1838-1845). Sager, who was then practicing in Jackson,
Michigan, in 1842 became professor of botany and zoology in the University of
Michigan, succeeding Asa Gray.8! In 1866 he gave his own herbarium to the
University .82 George Bull remained as a “‘subassistant” in botany in 1839 and
accompanied Houghton himself in the northern part of the state as well as working
independently in the southeastern part. In 1840 the legislature abolished the zoological
and botanical responsibilities of the survey completely; only a few collections are
known from 1840, evidently made by Houghton himself on Lake Superior.

One of the interesting plants collected in 1839 was a goldenrod, Solidago
houghtonii, named for Houghton, three years after his death, by Asa Gray in the first
edition of his well known manual (1848). Houghton and Bull left Mackinac Island on
August 14, 1839, in a rowboat with three oarsmen, bound for Green Bay. Somewhere
in what is now western Mackinac County, at the north end of Lake Michigan, on
August 15, they discovered this goldenrod.83 The species is endemic to the northern
shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron, growing in interdunal hollows, and is considered
a “threatened species” in the United States.84

It is not surprising that specimens from the first survey of Michigan were sent to
Gray fort he was, after all, professor of botany in the University! And Gray had spent
nearly the whole day of August 15, 1838, at Houghton’s home in Detroit.85
Unfortunately, many of the plants supplied to Gray are merely labeled ‘‘Michigan State
Coll.” without further data, and “Coll.” has even been assumed by some monographers
to stand for “College” (an anachronism at best) rather than “Collection.’86 Other

80Wright (1839, p. 421).

81From 1848 to 1850, Sager was also librarian of the University. In 1850, when the medical

department of the University was organized (as recommended by Regent Pitcher!), Sager assumed
child

Sager papers at the Michigan Historical Collections is a letter dated October 20, 1846, from
Thomas C. Brinsmade (John Wright’s former olanitae offering Sager the senior professorship made
vacant by the resignation of Prof. [George H.] Coo

82This herbarium was cataloged by A. B. Lyons as containing 878 species and 1555 specimens, as
reported by A. Winchell in his Statement of Operations in the Museum of the University of
Michigan... for the year ending September 24th, 1868, p. 8 (Regents Proc., p. 298). Widely cited
estimates of 1,200 species and 12,000 specimens are apparently greatly exaggerated.

83For details, see Voss (1956, pp. 27—28).

84See Mich. Bot. 16: 106 (1977).

85Letter from Asa Gra ay to Mrs. John Ses August 16, 1838, quoted in J. L. Gray (1893, 1:

76). Gray in an earlier letter (ibid., p. 73) had noted that Dr. Houghton’s home “‘is entirely
occupied as a store-house for the stuff collected in the State survey. It is astonishing what a
ieee be quantity of labor Dr. H. and his companions have done and what extensive collections
they have made.

86For ane see comments in Mich. Bot. 6: 20—21 (1967). Gray has even been assumed to have
collected these specimens

2

duplicates were widely distributed (including a considerable set to Zina Pitcher),87 and
these are often more adequately labeled, although sometimes collections are attributed
to Houghton which were gathered by the assistants who were in other parts of the
state than Houghton on the dates specified. The botanical results of the first survey
have been amply presented recently88 so little more need be said here. Michigan was
put on the “botanical map” by the survey, and this was perhaps first evident in the
8th edition of Eaton’s Manual, published in 1840, in which he had the collaboration of
Dr. John Wright, his colleague and former student and the former botanist to the
Geological Survey of Michigan. Over 1,000 species are mentioned for Michigan in this
edition of the Manual. As Eaton explained (in language we might find ambiguous):
“The districts about our N. W. Lakes...have been in a great measure deficient in
recorded localities of plants. ...the botanical surveys of Dr. Houghton, Dr. Wright,
and his diligent assistant Mr. G. Bull, have supplied these deficiencies.””®9

Houghton served two terms as mayor of Detroit (preceded and followed by Zina
Pitcher), he declined an offer to become president of the University of Michigan but
accepted a professorship, and was being considered for the governorship of the state at
the time of his death—altogether a popular and influential citizen apart from the
scientific contributions of himself and the competent associates he employed.

The first geological survey of Michigan technically expired in 1842 with no
subsequent appropriations by the legislature for salaries or field work, although
Houghton was still recognized as state geologist and was becoming famous for calling
attention to copper in the Upper Peninsula. In response to the disastrous financial
condition of the times, Houghton conceived a plan which would allow geological
observations to be made: he sought permission from the General Land Office of the
United States for the state geologist to require the deputy surveyors to make certain
observations during their surveys, thus connecting the geological survey with the linear
survey of the United States. This plan was presented by Houghton in a paper read
before the fifth annual meeting, in Washington in May of 1844, of the Association of
American Geologists and Naturalists, which he was then serving as treasurer.20 The
project was warmly endorsed. The land commissioner was doubtful, however, until
Houghton himself offered to take the contract, which was signed late in June of 1844.
Most of the work was done in 1845, when William Burt was Houghton’s chief
assistant.

William A. Burt (1792—1858)9! was a remarkable man, whose early career was in
Erie County, New York, where he was an excellent mechanic, justice of the peace, and
postmaster. He moved to Michigan in 1822, and engaged in building mills, including
those at Dexter. He settled in the township of Washington, Macomb County, north of
Detroit, and served in the territorial legislature. In 1831 he was elected county
surveyor and two years later became a postmaster and a judge as well as a U.S. deputy

87See Meyer & Elsasser (1973, p. 383).

88McVaugh (1970).

89Faton & Wright (1840, p. 16). : would have said that the deficiencies had been met, rather than
supplied, ia these diligent botanists!)

OThis the organization which became the American Association for the Advancement of
ee in “1848, oughton’s note to the chairman of the Hat committee, cepted his intention to

end the unless prevented by causes not now known to me” is i e enone

collection ne the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, fi "fh de R. L. Stuckey. "The proposal t
combine surveys was published in the proceedings of the meetings (Houghton 1844).
910n Willan Austin Burt, see Leeson (1882, pp. 241—243); Cannon (1884); H. E. Burt (1922).

26

surveyor. This was the beginning of a career in surveys of public lands and railroad
routes in Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. (He ran the township lines where Milwaukee
now stands.) In 1840, Burt received a contract to commence the surveys of the Upper
Peninsula of Michigan, work in which he remained for most of the decade. Distressed
by deflection of the magnetic compass, he had invented the solar compass (patented in
1836), which served him well in the Upper Peninsula, where it was he who discovered
iron ore in 1844 near Marquette and in 1846 in the Menominee district. (He also,
incidentally, patented in 1829 the first typewriter, and in 1856, the equatorial
sextant.)

Burt is mentioned here not because of his inventions or his collaboration with
Houghton in combining geological observations with the linear surveys, but because he
also collected plants. Many of his specimens were supplied to Dennis Cooley, a
neighbor in Washington Township, and came with Cooley’s herbarium to the Agri-
cultural College, now Michigan State University. The notable feature about Burt’s
collections is the detailed localities on their labels. Many specimens of the time were
merely labeled, e.g., “Lake Superior’’—without mention of state or even country, or
“Michigan,” or occasionally with the name of an island, river, or other landmark.
Burt’s specimens, like the more precisely labeled ones of good collectors today, have
the survey township recorded, e.g. “T46N-R41W...about 30 miles south of Lake
Superior ... 1847.” But then, Ae was running the survey lines! No one else could
know with such precision exactly where he was in the wilds of the Upper Peninsula at
the time.

Plant collecting was carried on by other surveyors, friends of Burt’s, such as
George H. Cannon, some of whose specimens also entered Cooley’s herbarium. In
addition, of course, the surveyors left valuable notes on the vegetation of the areas
through which their lines passed. The species of bearing and line trees which they
recorded have been analyzed to map the original vegetation of many areas.?2 One of
these witness trees, blazed by Burt June 17, 1850, stands to this day, a lofty red pine
well known as an attraction in the Pigeon River Country State Forest, Otsego County,
in northern Lower Michi

Dennis Cooley (1787 1860), 93 Burt’s botanical mentor, was a native of Deerfield,
Massachusetts, and practiced medicine for five years in Georgia before moving to
Washington Township, Macomb County, Michigan, in 1827—five years after Burt
settled in the same township—and where he practiced until 1856. Like so many
medical men of his day, Cooley was an ardent botanist, and he accumulated a
herbarium variously estimated at 4,000 and 20,000 specimens, which was presented by
his widow in 1863 to the Agricultural College. In 1853 Burt completed a manuscript
list of the flora near his home, but it seems no longer to be extant.

Following Houghton’s death by drowning in Lake Superior in October of 1845,
his assistants, William Burt and Bela Hubbard, continued their surveys through 1846.
Then in 1847 Congress authorized continuation of the survey of U.S. mineral lands in
Michigan, and Charles T. Jackson94 was placed in charge. Jackson had just done

92For a recent example and summary of methods—with reference to Burt’s original survey, see
Frederick et al. (1977).

930n Dennis Cooley (M. D. Medical College of Berkshire, Mass., 1822), see Kenaston (1863, pp.
19—21); Leeson (1882, p. 817); Beal (1902a); Barnhart (1921). Kenaston, Leeson, and Barnhart give
Cooley’s year of birth as 1789, but Beal’s date of 1787 (given by Barnhart 1965) is in ne with
the Washington cemetery record, which gives his age as 73 at his death Sept. 8, 1860.

940n C. T. Jackson, see chapter 8 and note 299, below.

27

surveys in Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island (as well as in Nova Scotia during
his summers at Harvard) and was well known for mineral analyses in his private
laboratory.2> In 1844 and 1845 he had visited the copper region of Lake Superior on
behalf of Boston interests. Jackson’s report, published by Congress in 1849, included
not only geological reports by Burt and Hubbard on surveys of township lines in 1845
and 1846 but also a “Catalogue of plants collected by William A. Burt, Esq., on the
primitive region south of Lake Superior in 1846.” The catalog is by Dennis Cooley, to
whom Burt referred his specimens, and it lists over 180 species, usually with survey
townships indicated.

Upon Jackson’s resignation in 1849, two of his assistants, J. W. Foster?® and J. D.
Whitney, were named to continue the work. The second part of their report, published
by Congress in 1851, includes a botanical chapter by Whitney’s younger brother, W. D.
Whitney (1827—1894),?7 who studied Sanskrit in spare moments in the Michigan
wilderness, became largely diverted from natural sciences, and later became a distin-
guished philologist at Yale. The nature of the Upper Peninsula terrain was aptly
described by Foster and Whitney in their introduction: “Nearly the whole of this area
is an unbroken wilderness, interspersed with tangled thickets, almost impassable
marshes and inland lakes, which retard the progress of the explorer; ... Passing weeks
in succession in the midst of the forest, with no trace of the works of man around us,
except the surveyors’ lines, we have encountered difficulties unknown and unappreci-

95See Abbott (1971, p. 234).

960On J. W. Foster, see chapter 8 and note 301, below.

970n William Dwight Whitney, see Lounsbury (1895) and Bender in Dict. Am. Biogr. 20: 166—169
(1936). See also note by Fernald (Rhodora 37: 336—337. 1935); Fernald refers to a “frequent
assumption”’ that W. D. Whitney was really . Whitney, but the assumption seems to have been
principally his own (Rhodora 712 1S0:- 1905):

|

eee of Pitcher’s thistle, Cirsium pitcheri, endemic to the upper Great Lakes shores (see p.
14). (From Guire & Voss 1963, p. 102.)

28

ated by geologists in a more civilized and less inhospitable region.”98 W. D. Whitney’s
report listed over 400 species of vascular plants from the Upper Peninsula, many of
them with localities indicated—including, for example, Pitcher’s thistle at Grand Sable.
Notes on the trees and some of the shrubs are especially extensive. Evidently the
report is based solely on observations by members of the field party between July 1
and October 1, 1849; there is no indication as to how many of the species noticed
were actually collected, but some specimens of Whitney’s are to be found in the Gray
Herbarium. One of these is the arnica described by Fernald?? in 1935 as Arnica
whitneyi—named for Whitney and to this day known only from Keweenaw County,
Michigan, and the Sibley Peninsula of Ontario, to the north. (Whitney had included it
in his list as A. mollis, from Copper Harbor; it is now sometimes considered a variety
of the western A. cordifolia. However it is classified, it is considered endangered in
Michigan. !99)

This is a natural point at which to leave, temporarily, the geological survey of
Michigan and its natural history correlates. The overlapping connections in personnel
and interests from Cass to Schoolcraft to Houghton to Burt show a continuity which
could hardly be interrupted to look at simultaneous developments on the other side of
Lake Michigan or on the north shore of Lake Superior. As John Torrey wrote to a
correspondent in 1847: “Since the death of Prof. Houghton, Nat. History has
retrograded in Michigan.”’!9

98Foster & Whitney (1851, p. iv).

99In Rhodora 37: 334—337 (1935).

100See Mich. Bot. 16: 106 (1977).

101Torrey to Harry N. Patterson, May 27, 1847, as quoted by Kibbe (1953, p. 509).

Chapter 3.
THE INCREASE OF BOTANY IN WISCONSIN

In the area now known as Wisconsin, as in Michigan, the first references to plants
are by French missionaries, explorers, and traders—and they are fragmentary. Wild-rice
and other edible plants received particular notice. 102 Casual botanical observations are
about all one might expect during what we may call the pre-Linnaean and early
post-Linnaean years, when not only was knowledge of the Great Lakes new from
almost every standpoint, but also the science of botany itself was developing. In
Wisconsin, as in Michigan, the first purely scientific work was by Thomas Nuttall,
followed by the expeditions of Cass, Schoolcraft, and Houghton, all of which have
been mentioned.

Th to whom is due chief honor in Wisconsin is Increase A. Lapham
(1811—1875),!93 that state’s first resident botanist, indeed first scholar in many fields
for, like so many of his contemporaries, he was by no means restricted to a single
discipline. Even for those days of diverse attainments, Lapham was a man of
remarkable accomplishments in botany, zoology, geology, meteorology, cartography,
archeology, and engineering. He was born of Quaker stock in the state of New York
in 1811, one of 13 children, and helped his father, a contractor, on construction of
the Erie canal, the Welland canal, and other projects. In 1827, he moved westward to
Ohio and that year—at the age of 16—submitted his first paper for publication in the
American Journal of Science, beginning a lifelong correspondence and friendship with
its editor, Benjamin Silliman. The young Lapham was for three years assistant engineer
on the Ohio canal, kept a journal with records of the weather and observations on
natural history, and published two more papers on the geology of Ohio. Ten weeks
after Wisconsin Territory was separated from Michigan Territory, Lapham arrived in

102Cheney (1900, p. 558) asserts that Jean Nicolet, who is credited with the discovery of Lake
Michigan in 1634, referred “‘in his notes” to a single Wisconsin plant, wild-rice, observed a s the
principal food o Ae Indians at Green Bay. oe Nicolet left no ‘“‘notes’’; the Jesuit Peloton
which are our source of nig se ‘original’ account there is of Nicolet’s trip, say nothing of
wild-rice. Cheney cites as his s e C. W. Butterfield’ s History of the Discovery a the Northwest
b sn rae in 1634 (Cacia 1881). However, Butterfield (footnote 2, p. 57) clearly stated
that h sed his description of the Menomonees on accounts from “dates some years subsequent
to He s visit.” Jf there were evidence that Nicolet found Indians using wild-rice, which at best
is extremely rare on the southeast side of Lake Superior, it would support the assumption that
Nicolet did arrive in Wisconsin on his search for a short route to China, rather than on Lake
Superior as claimed by some (see Clifford P. Wilson in Minn. Hist. 27: 216—220 (1946) and Harry
Dever in site Hist. 50: 318—322 (1966).)

importance of wild-rice, so frequently mentioned in early Wisconsin reports, is in marked
ieee to Michigan, where, for example, the U.S. commissioner of Indian affairs, noting that
nearly 14 million acres of Michigan had been ceded by the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians in 1836,
reported that the Chippewas depended for no ig tes of their subsistence ‘‘within the present limits of

Michigan” on wild-rice, “‘a plant common more northerly and westerly points.” (25th Congress,
2nd Sess., U.S. Senate Doc. 1, p. 531. 1838 [Doe. 314]).
030ne of th comprehensive biographical sketches of Increase Allen Lapham is by N. H.

Winchell (1894); s see gees Hoy (1876); Quaife (1914); Still (1938).

2?

30

Milwaukee on July 1, 1836, having traveled over 1,200 miles from Reading, Ohio—
mostly by steamboat from Clevelan

Lapham was brought to Wisconsin by Byron Kilbourne (for whom he had earlier
worked) at a salary of $1000 per year to assist in surveying, canal-building, and
promoting. During the year and a half before his arrival, Milwaukee had grown from
10 residents in two families to a population of about 1,000. Lapham soon entered into
the spirit of speculation and growth, perhaps following the example of Douglass
Houghton, whom he had visited in Detroit en route. “Dr. Houghton,” Lapham wrote
from Detroit to a brother, “gave me many fine plants from the Northwest. He has
made a fortune here by speculation .. .”!04 And to Charles W. Short, Lapham wrote:
“I saw Dr. Houghton at Detroit—He has been too much occupied with his profession

1047, A. Lapham to Darius Lapham, June 21, 1836. An a een vignette of Detroit is in the
same letter: “Detroit is a fine city one hundred and thirty-five years old; it contains about 8,00
inhabitants, several fine four-story brick buildings, numerous fine adie and a market-house as
large as an ordinary Presbyterian church and built much in . same style! I went to church
pcan and on coming out, I was surprised to see a row of one-horse carts, precisely similar to
carting dirt on the canal, standing in front of me church, apparently waiting for
akan or somebody, I had the curiosity to wait also and see what was the ae and you may
well suppose that my surprise was not lessened to see many fine gentlemen and ladies come out of
te church and get into those carts, sitting flat on the bottom, having only a mat or som e hay
under them! A driver took his stand amongst them and drove off in, what I suppose they scales:
fine style. This appears to be the usual mode of traveling about the city.”” This was the city which
became the automobile capital of the world!

Increase A. Lapham (1811—1875).
(From N. H. Winchell 1894, facing
p. 1.)

31

and with the speculation to attend to scientific pursuits. He supplied me with many
interesting plants, some from the very source of the Father of Waters!”!9° Asa Gray,
to whom Lapham also wrote from Detroit, encouraged him to collect. He corre-
sponded and exchanged specimens not only with Gray, Houghton, Short, and Silliman,
but also with a very large number of other leading scientists of the day, including
Louis Agassiz, William Boott, Chester Dewey, George Engelmann, J. W. Robbins,
Thomas Say, W. S. Sullivant, John Torrey, George Vasey, Alphonso Wood, and “nearly
every American botanist and a large number of foreign ones.” !%

Lapham had not been in Milwaukee a year when he published a catalog of the
plants and shells of the vicinity, a 12-page pamphlet which seems to be the first
scientific work to have been published in Wisconsin Territory.!97 It included a simple
alphabetical list of a little more than 100 species of vascular plants, without further
locality data or habitat. This was revised two years later to almost 400 species, with
two mosses, and a supplement in two more years added another 145 species.108 By
1853, Lapham was able to publish a sparsely annotated catalog of about 950 species
for the entire state.199 Supplements to this report appeared in later years, partly the
work of Thomas J. Hale.!1°

Lapham lived to the age of 64 and thus was able to exemplify even more than his
Michigan contemporary, Douglass Houghton, who died at 36, the development of
resident botanical talent. He was not the transient explorer, passing through the state
and plucking plants along the route. A pillar of Milwaukee, promoting its growth and
investing in real estate, he helped to lure prospective settlers by his maps and books on
Wisconsin; in addition, he was the resident scientist, promoting at the same time
numerous scientific endeavors.!!! Described as ‘a small, spare, grey whiskered,
spectacled man, methodical and reserved in manner,” ! 12 Lapham was not a man with
excess time on his hands! He built up a large herbarium of some 24,000 specimens,
both by his own collecting and by his exchanges (through which his Wisconsin
specimens became dispersed widely), which was acquired after his death by the
University of Wisconsin—the only portion of Lapham’s collections not lost by fire
December 1, 1884.!13

The relatively short-lived Wisconsin Natural History Association was organized in

105]. A. Lapham to Dr. pea Aug. 17, 1836. I am indebted to R. L. Stuckey for supplying
transcriptions from the ies of Lapham’s ee in the manuscript collection of the Ohio
Historical Society baa: the originals are in the Lapham papers at the State Historical Society of

Wisconsin.

106 Arthur (1881).

107Lapham (1836). The facsimile issued in 1976 was made from the copy presented by Lapham to
Miss Ann M. Allcott of Marshall, Michigan, whom he married soon after; a photograph of the
original arg staea is included with some copies of the facsimile, which also added an explanatory
page abou ork.

108A rather ‘ii accounting of early — botanical publications is given by Cheney
(1900—1901), making repetition unnecessary

er pen (1853); the earlier explorations of Nuttall, Douglass, Say, and Houghton in Wisconsin
are mentioned. As a result of his own excursions to neighboring states, plus literature and reports
he eed eliable, Lapham also published the first catalogs of the flora of the states of Illinois
(1857) and Minnesota (1875—but written 1865)

110See Musselman (1969). The exact date of neither the birth nor the death of Hale seems to be

known, but he flourished botanically for a few years and did some collecting near Lake Michigan.
111See Still (1938).

112William G. Bruce in Wis. Mag. Hist. 18: 42 (1934).

113Schorger (1947, p. 174).

32

Lapham’s office on March 3, 1848 (less than three months before Wisconsin became a
state), for “mutual improvement in knowledge of the natural sciences; the study and
development of the natural productions of Wisconsin; and the encouragement and
diffusion of a taste for the pursuit of those enobling sciences among the citizens.”! 14
Lapham served as president of the Association, but his breadth of scientific interests
was not necessarily shared by members who had a specific scientific hobby and who
were inclined to attend meetings only when the agenda included a subject in which
they possessed some knowledge. The Association soon became inactive but was revived
by the governor in 1853 in order to sponsor a museum in Madison. Negotiations to
acquire Lapham’s extensive collections (including ethnological, archeological, and
geological material) broke down, but the museum operated from 1853 until 1855 or
soon afterwards. The Natural History Association transferred its activity back to
Milwaukee and continued more or less active until 1863. Nothing was published under
its auspices, but it did promote an active interest in natural history and was doubtless
some stimulus to the founding, in 1857, of the Naturhistorische Verein von Wisconsin.
This society flourished and rapidly accumulated collections which became too
large to manage. In 1882 it resolved to donate its collections and property to the city
of Milwaukee. Following authorizations by the city and the legislature, the Public
Museum of the City of Milwaukee was organized in 1883.115 Another durable
Wisconsin institution has been the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters,
which was founded in Madison in February of 1870. Lapham aided in its organization
and served it as general secretary until February, 1873. The first volume of the
Transactions, which the Academy promptly began publishing, appeared in 1872.!16

114Schorger (1947, p. 169).

I15See Thal (1922).

1160On the Wisconsin Academy, see Chamberlin (1921) and Kroncke (1970).
A

CATALOGUE

PLANTS & SHELLS,

FOUND IN THE VICINITY OF

MILWAU KEE, Title page (reduced) of Lapham’s Catalogue of
1836, the y that Wisconsin Territory was
ON THE separated from Michigan Territory, a year
fore Milwauke as incorporated, and 12
years before Wisconsin was admitted as a
West side of Lake Michigan. Riate,

BY I. A. LAPHAM.

WINGY AWIRIBTS 3 Wo Wo

PRINTED AT THE ADVERTISER OFFICE.

ao

For Lapham, “as for many men of science in this era, nature was the main
laboratory, the naked eye the chief instrument, and the collection and comparing of
specimens and natural phenomena the chief method of research.” 117 Unsuccessfully
promoting the idea of a state natural history survey, Lapham pointed out to the
legislature in 1855 that “the present is the proper time for making these investigations,
before any more of the native species become extinct.... Soon it will be too late to
secure specimens, or learn anything of the nature and habits of these species.” 118 A
century before extensive ‘‘official” activity on behalf of endangered and threatened
species, another distinguished Wisconsin naturalist, Thure Kumlien (1819—1888) 119
lamented destruction of the flora, through loss of habitat: “A large number of our
plants have gradually become rare and some of them completely eradicated.” 120
Kumlien, who came to Milwaukee from Sweden in 1843 and who was the first teacher
in botany of Edward L. Greene, sent many natural history specimens abroad as well as
building up collections for schools and museums in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the
United States. A former student of Elias Fries at Upsala, Kumlien was said to know
every kind of tree, flower, moss, lichen, and mushroom in southern Wisconsin. He was
employed 1881—1883 as taxidermist and conservator by the Wisconsin Natural History
Society (Naturhistorische Verein von Wisconsin) and, until his death, remained under
the new management when the city of Milwaukee took over the Society’s museum.

One of the interesting persons whose botanical activities flourished after those of
Lapham was T. A. Bruhin (1835—1896),!2! a Catholic priest (O.S.B.), born in
Switzerland, where he also died. In 1869 he came to Milwaukee and he served parishes
in Neu Coln, Centreville, and Potosi, Wisconsin, until 1881, when he moved to
Columbus, Ohio, for four years. Bruhin published copiously on the flora of Wisconsin,
usually in Austrian journals or in German-language newspapers of Milwaukee. In his
comparative flora of Wisconsin,!22 written the year after Lapham’s death, and in later
papers, Bruhin was especially interested in considering Old World plants cultivated or
established in North America and American plants introduced in Europe, as well as
species common to both continents. His lists include compilation from previous work
as well as original records from Wisconsin.

Of course, not all early explorations by Wisconsin botanists in the Great Lakes
area were confined to the Milwaukee region. Among those who ventured farther north
was L. S. Cheney (1858—1938),!23 a student and later professor at the University of
Wisconsin, who collected in the summer of 1891 ‘at various points in northern
Wisconsin, along the north shore of Lake Superior, and along the boundary between
Minnesota and Ontario.” !24 He listed 345 species as a result, all with good locality
data, including bryophytes, in which he was especially interested.

117Kroncke (1970, p. 163).

118Quoted by Schorger (1947, pp. 175-176).

1190n Thure Ludwig Theodore Kumlien, whose center of activity was in Jefferson County,
technically just west of the Lake Michigan basin, see Greene (1888) and Lawson (1921).

120Kumlien (1876).

1210n Thomas Aquinas Brunin, see Cheney (1901, pp. 4—6) and Barnhart (1965, 1: 268).
122Bruhin (1877).

1230n Lellen Sterling Cheney, see Conklin (1941).

124Cheney (1893).

Chapter 4.

THE BROTHERS WINCHELL AND
DEVELOPMENTS FROM MICHIGAN TO MINNESOTA

Alexander Winchell (1824—1891),!25 born in Dutchess County, New York,
developed an ardent interest in botany following his graduation in 1847 from Wesleyan
University. His first published scientific paper was his only strictly botanical one, on
local flora in Dutchess County, published in 1851. He came to the University of
Michigan initially in 1854 as professor of physics and civil engineering. However, he
managed to have himself appointed the next year as professor of geology, zoology, and
botany, succeeding Abram Sager. In 1859 he was further appointed by the governor as
state geologist, under the new geological survey established by the legislature. In the
tradition of Louis Agassiz (who had recommended him for the Michigan position), he
introduced laboratory instruction in botany at the University and distinguished himself
as a geologist, lecturer, and influential teacher of botanists and others. Among those
influenced was his younger brother, N. H. Winchell (1839—1914),!26 who entered the
University of Michigan in 1858, graduated in 1866 (having taught school intermit-
tently), and received a master’s degree in 1869.

Although A. Winchell apparently did little if any collecting of plants in Michigan,
N. H. Winchell served as a “‘volunteer collector” in 1859 for the geological survey and
in the 1860 season he was employed at $30 per month as a “‘subassistant”!27 or ‘in
the special capacity of botanical collector and assistant.”!28 Beginning in early June of
1860 he accompanied parties in the field, from Saginaw Bay to the islands at the north
end of Lake Huron (with special emphasis on Drummond Island), Sault Ste. Marie, and
the north end of Lake Michigan, down to Grand Traverse Bay.!29 Unfortunately,
specimens collected during this season have not been encountered, although they ought
to be in the University of Michigan Herbarium.!39 However, N. H. Winchell did
prepare a “Catalogue of Phaenogamous and Acrogenous Plants Found Growing Wild in
the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and the Islands at the Head of Lake Huron,” which
was published in his brother’s first (and only) biennial report in 1861. This was the
first attempt to list all the plants of the Lower Peninsula and was based on previous
published and unpublished sources as well as the observations of 1859 and 1860. It
cites many specific localities and was quite an achievement for someone who had just
entered the University two years previously!

125 Among many references on Alexander Winchell, see Merrill (1920, p. 203 et sqq.—this account
actually by Winchell); Mains (1943, pp. 495—497); Jones (1977, pp. 268—272); and, especially,
Davenport (195 1a).

126On Newton Horace Winchell, see Gale (1911); Minnesota Academy of Science (1914); Upham
(1915); and Davenport (1951b).

127Merrill (1920, pp. 208, 213).

128A. Winchell (1861, p. 245).

129A. Winchell (1861, p. 27); see also Voss (1956, pp. 29-30).

130Perhaps they were among the stored collections lost in the fire of 1913 (Mains 1956, p. 1447).

34

35

The geological survey effectively died of fiscal insufficiency during the Civil War,
although Alexander Winchell was still looked upon as state geologist. In 1869, efforts
were successful in the state legislature to revive the survey and Winchell was
commissioned as director by the governor. N. H. Winchell was employed by the survey
in 1869 and 1870. In 1871, A. Winchell resigned in protest over restrictions by the
legislature (which had failed to provide for publication of the results of the survey)
and in 1873 he resigned his University professorship to accept a position elsewhere.
When he returned in 1879 to Ann Arbor, where he remained until his death, he was
professor of geology and paleontology, botanical instruction having passed after his
departure in 1873 to two of his former students, Mark W. Harrington and Volney M.
Spalding.!31

There were some rather direct connections between Michigan and scientific
developments in Minnesota, which had been organized as a territory separate from
Wisconsin in 1849 and admitted as a state in May of 1858. Early efforts at a geological
survey were officially limited to geological matters and accomplished little. Thomas
Clark (1814—1878),!32 assistant state geologist in 1864 and one of the “commis-
sioners’” ordered appointed by the second state legislature in 1860, did publish an
annotated list of about 100 species of northeastern Minnesota in 1865. It comprises
mostly cultivated plants and trees, arranged alphabetically by common name; localities
cited range from Pigeon Point to Duluth along the Superior shore, with Superior and
La Pointe, Wisconsin, also mentioned. Clark was a civil engineer, born in New York
state, who lived in Ohio and Wisconsin (surveying the original plat of Superior) before
moving to Minnesota, where he lived at the town of Beaver Bay, which he surveyed in
1856. He was a state senator 1859—1860.

Alexander Winchell was asked by the governor to visit Minnesota in 1870 to
examine and report on salt springs. We can imagine that Winchell may have discussed
the examples of the first Michigan survey, under Houghton, and the second, under
himself, both of which included botanical and zoological as well as geological work.
For in 1872 the Minnesota legislature established a comprehensive geological and
natural history survey as proposed by president W. W. Folwell of the University of
Minnesota. N. H. Winchell, who was then employed by the Ohio Geological Survey,
was asked by Folwell to become state geologist (and professor of mineralogy and
geology).!33 He assumed his duties in September of 1872 and served as state geologist
for the rest of the century (although relinquishing his teaching duties in 1878). Warren
Upham (1850—1934),!34 assistant geologist 1879-1885 (and later librarian and
secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society), compiled a catalog of the flora of
Minnesota, which was published in 1884. It reviewed previous work, beginning with
Torrey’s list of Capt. Douglass’ plants and including a list prepared in 1865 by I. A.

131See Mains (1943, pp. 496—497).

1320n Thomas Clark, see Upham (1920, pp. 146 & eee

133The organization of the Minnesota survey was que in being administered through the
University. On a history of surveys in Minnesota, see > Merrill (1920, pp. 239-255), based on N.
H. Winchell (188

1340n Warren a who came to Minnesota from New Hampshire in 1879, and who succeeded
N. H. Winchell in 1914 as archeologist for the Minnesota Historical Society, see Natl. Cycl. Am.
Biogr. 7: 127-128 (1892); Upham & Dunlap (1912, p. 801); Emmons (1935); Emmons in Dict.
Am. Biogr. 19: 124-125 (1936). These all say nothing of Upham’s botanical work; Emmons’
memorial even omits botanical titles in its bibliography.

36

Lapham, who collected in Minnesota on several occasions.!35 Upham’s list covered all
vascular plants and was well annotated.

The intensity of botanical work for the Minnesota survey fluctuated. In December
of 1875, the regents of the University ordered a thorough and systematic examination
of the plant life of the state, a project supported by Winchell, who addressed a circular
letter to the botanists of the state in the spring of 1876, soliciting their support.!36
But in 1878, botanical and zoological work was ordered kept in abeyance.!37 Much of
the published literature on the Minnesota flora deals, of course, with portions of the
state beyond the area of the Great Lakes. The earliest collections from the Lake
Superior region (Duluth northeastward to the international border) were made around
1870 by persons from the U.S. Lake Survey (see chapter 6 below) and other
“outsiders.” But in 1878, Benedict Juni (1852—7),138 then a University of Minnesota
student, was appointed as a botanical and field assistant to the Minnesota survey
(paralleling N. H. Winchell’s own employment, while still a student, by the Michigan
survey) and he gave ‘ta few leisure hours” to collecting along the Superior shore
although his duty was “in another line”; in 1879 he published a pioneering report on
the plants of this region (mostly without detailed localities). The following season
(1879), another student, Thomas S. Roberts (1858—1946),!39 while assisting geologist
C. W. Hall, collected extensively along the Lake Superior shore; his list of 290 species
was published in 1880 and includes many not noted by Juni.

Yet another young employee of the Minnesota survey from 1876 to 1885 was
Clarence Luther Herrick (1858—1904),!4! a native of the state, who had organized a
“Young Naturalists’ Society” with T. S. Roberts and others in the Twin Cities region
even before entering the University as a subfreshman in 1875. As was true of many of
his contemporaries, he was interested in plants and animals as well as in geology; like
Alexander Winchell, he was later described as representative of the last of the tradition
of great naturalists exemplified by Louis Agassiz. In 1885, Herrick received an M.S.
degree from the University of Minnesota and accepted a position as professor of
geology and natural history at Denison University, Granville, Ohio. He spent several
weeks the following summer with a group of Denison students on the northeast shore

135 Lapham’s list was published Pucci: in 1875 with a prefatory note hed N. H. Winchell,
who stated: “With a generous and cosmopolitan spirit which characterized him in his scientific
labors, he sent the manuscript of the Following catalogue of the plants of aa to the writer,
soon after the initiation of the geological survey of the State...as a free contribution to the

m

the labors mae ph Lapham himself but also of all his predecessors, in _ g the botany of
Minnesota.’ The catalog is solely a list of names, without annotations, include bryophytes
and lichens. Much of the previous work cited by — in his coe: aacesnert dealt with
portions of Minnesota beyond the Lake Superior bas

136See Geol. Nat. Hist. Surv. Minn. Ann. Rep. 5 on 1876): 6—7, 64—66 (1877); Davenport
(1951b, p. 220).

137Geol. Nat. Hist. Surv. Minn. Ann. Rep. 7 (for 1878): 7 (1879).

1380n Benedict Juni, see Upham & Dunlap (1912, p. 390). A Swiss who came to Minnesota in
1859, he was captured by Sioux Indians in 1862. See also W. W. Folwell, History of Minnesota
(Minn. Hist. Soc., 1924), 2: 125. Juni attended the University i iieiaaiae 1876—1879 but
received no degree, | am informed (1978) by Maxine B. Clapp, Archiv

1390On Thomas Sadler Roberts, physician and ornithologist, see ae & Kilgore (1946);
also C. J. Herrick in Sci Monthly 54: 366 (1942).

1400n the collections of Juni and Roberts, see also Butters & Abbe in Rhodora 55: 75—76 (1953).
1410n Clarence Luther Herrick, see C. J. Herrick (1947; 1955).

Newton H. Winchell (1839—1914), probably in the late 1870’s. (Minnesota Historical Society)

of Lake Superior, at Michipicoten Bay, where the primary interests were geological;

but “plants and other specimens were collected.”!42 No biological specimens are
mentioned in the published report of the summer.

By the 1880’s and 1890’s, John M. Holzinger (1853—1929), Conway MacMillan
(1867-1929), John H. Sandberg (1848—1917), Edmund P. Sheldon (1869—1913),!44
and other noted Minnesota collectors were including the Lake Superior region in their
field investigations, although most of their work was done elsewhere in the state.

142¢. J. Herrick (1955, p. 42); see also C. J. Herrick (1947, p. 178).
£43¢. 7. Herrick, W. G. Tight, & H. L. Jones, Geology and lithology of Michipicoten Bay. Results
of the summer laboratory session of 1886. Bull. Sci. Lab. Denison Univ. 2: 119-143 (1887). If

any biological specimens were retained at Denison they were presumably lost in the 1905 fire
which Peal Bamey Science Hall.

7

38

Joseph C. Arthur (1850—1942) collected in Minnesota during his early years in lowa,
and in 1886, immediately after receiving the first doctorate in botany granted by
Cornell University, he left his job as botanist at the New York Agricultural Experiment
Station and was “more formally opening up the botanic work” of the Minnesota
survey.!45 Liberty Hyde Bailey (to be mentioned again in chapter 9), Warren Upham,
and E. W. D. Holway (1853—1923) joined Arthur that summer in an investigation of
all plants (including cryptogams) at Vermilion Lake and vicinity—the region between
Lake Superior and the international border.!4® Bailey included a list of plants seen at
Duluth in the report on the 1886 season, and Upham included a supplement to his
1884 flora in the report. The noted lichenologist Bruce Fink (1861—1927), while
located in lowa, worked several summers, beginning in 1896, for the geological and
natural history survey of Minnesota. He made an extensive study of the lichens of the
Minnesota portion of the Lake Superior shore in 1897 and referred in his report!47 to
earlier work along the Ontario shore by Agassiz and by Macoun.

1446 dmund Perry Sheldon is the only vegas: eit in this paragraph for whom biographical
data are obscure. Upham & Dunlap ae p 97) say he was born Sept. 25, 1863; American Men
of Science ed. 2 (1910, p. 424) says h . or Aug. 9, 1869. Both agree that he was born in
Bowling Green, Missouri, and that he aa from the University of Minnesota in 1894. Maxine
B. Clapp, Archivist, University of Minnesota, informs me (1977 & 1978) that the 1869 birth date is
confirmed by her sources, that even the cohesive class of 1894 soon lost bea oO eldon, and that
the date of his death is not recorded; he began an instructorship in botany at the University in
1894 and his resignation was accepted by the regents June 1, 1896. t
with a picture, is in The Gopher, the annual published by the junior class of the University of
Minnesota (10: 103. 1896); it notes that he just returned from ‘ta two months’ study of eastern

on
oa
oO
S)
=
a)
cz
re)
e
~
oO
fe)
>

herbaria.”” After leaving Minnesota, h s otanical explorer and forester i Teg M
Sci.). Sheldon then went into law, being admitted to California on January 4, 1910; he
was admitted temporarily as an attorney in Oregon in 1911, he was in Portland, but

n tla
little other information about his legal career seems to be available (M. A. Gholston, Oregon State
Bar, pers. comm. 1978). Sheldon’s undergraduate fraternity was Theta Delta Chi, and_ their
executive secretary reports to me (1978) that he died in 1913.
145 arthur (1887, p. 5). In 1887, Arthur went to Purdue University, where ~ remained for the
rest of his life. Kem (Phytopathology 32: 833-844. 1942), among others, summarizes his
distinguished career as a plant pathologist and includes a bibliography, but a mention of the
innesota wor
146See chines et al. (1887) and Rodgers (1949, pp. 111—113).
147Fink (1899).

Edmund P. Sheldon (1869— 1913), who described an arrow-
a d

ud
vi sota. see The Gopher; see footnote 144 above.)

6

N. H. Winchell had scarcely gotten settled in Minnesota before he proposed, in
December of 1872, that a state scientific society be organized. Dr. Asa E. Johnson
(1825—1906)!48 offered his office for the first meetings and was looked upon as the
“founding father’ of the Minnesota Academy of Natural Sciences, which was launched
in January of 1873. Dr. Johnson was the first president, and most of the founding
members were physicians. N. H. Winchell was the youngest charter member and one of
the few non-medical ones, but he was the ‘“‘most active, diligent and interested worker
of all the members of the Academy” and served it as president 1879—1881, 1897, and
1898.149 Louis Agassiz was an honorary member. Publication of a bulletin was begun
the first year (1873). Soon, a museum was established, with specimens in cases “‘copied
from similar cases in the museum of the University of Michigan”’—but botanical
specimens were not included at the first, although Dr. Johnson started reporting on the
fungi of Minnesota in 1876 and Warren Upham on the vascular plants in 1882. In
1881, Clarence Luther Herrick was secretary of the Minnesota Academy, “the most
northerly or northwesterly in the United States.”159 The Academy was active
principally in the Twin Cities region, but like its homologous institution in Wisconsin,
deserves mention for the early date of its establishment on the frontier of science in
the Old Northwest.

1480n Asa Emery Johnson, see Gale in Proc. Minn. Acad. 4 (Bull. 3): 322—323 eee

1490n the Minnesota Academy (which became sim the ‘Minnesota Academy of Science” on
March 6, 1906), see its early bulletins, especially 3 (1911) and the Saal number for
Winchell (5: 69-116. 1914).

150Bull. Minn. Acad. 2: 44 (1881).

Chapter 5.
LAKE SUPERIOR, NORTH OF GITCHE GUMEE

The south shore of Lake Superior was explored by the expeditions to the
Mississippi already discussed—Indian legends recorded by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft even
inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (in The Song of Hiawatha). Early Wisconsin and
Minnesota work included some study of the west end of that vast inland sea. But what
of the Canadian shore? The first scientific exploring expedition to pass along it was in
too great a hurry to accomplish much there. This was the second expedition conducted
by Major Stephen H. Long, who had explored 1819-1820 west to the Rocky
Mountains, examining the recent Louisiana Purchase. In 1823, Secretary of War
Calhoun ordered Long to command an expedition to the St. Peter’s [Minnesota] River
and Lake Winnipeg.!5!_ Edwin James was supposed to accompany it (as he had Long’s
earlier expedition) as botanist, geologist, and physician, but he failed to receive his
orders in time to connect with the party. Consequently, Thomas Say (1787—1834),
who had also been on Long’s first expedition and who was to serve as “zoologist and
antiquary” on this one, undertook “to collect such plants as might appear to him
interesting, but with that diffidence with which a man will attend to a task with which
he does not profess to be conversant.” !5

Long’s expedition left Philadelphia at the end of April in 1823 and traveled across
Ohio to Fort Wayne, thence to Chicago and across Wisconsin Territory to the
Mississippi. On the return trip, however, the route led via Lake of the Woods and
Rainy Lake to Fort William [now included in Thunder Bay]. Kakabeka Falls, not far
west of Fort William, was a collecting site. The expedition left Fort William September
1S, in a leaky, flat-bottomed 30-foot sailboat and arrived at Fort Brady, at Sault Ste.
Marie, 15 days later, on September 30.!53 This was a rapid trip along the north shore
of Lake Superior, where the rocky coast impressed the travelers although Keating
admitted: “Our visit to this coast was of too transient and hasty a nature to permit us
to extend our observations.”!54 In view of the “unusually boisterous and severe”
season, which featured snow, hail, or rain as well as strong winds nearly the entire trip,
it is remarkable that any observations were made at all! The accounts by Long and by
Keating include only the most vague and general remarks on the vegetation of the
Lake Superior region.

Thomas Nuttall was supposed to report on the plants collected by the expedition,

1510n Long and this expedition, see Keating (1924); Ewan (1950, p. 253); Meisel (1926, 2:
419—423); Stuckey (1970).

152Keating (1824, 1: 12). Thomas Say achieved fame primarily as a zoologist, especially as an
entomologist; his botanical work in the Great Lakes region was so slight that a discussion of his
interesting life is hardly ian here. Ewan (1950, p. ete cites some principal references; Weiss &
Ziegler summarize this expedition (1931, ch. 6, pp. 92—105).

153Keating (1824, 2: 176). William H. Keating served the expedition as mineralogist and geologist,
and also prepared the narrative after its return.

154Keating (1824, 2: 177).

41

but he did not return from a European trip in time to complete his work, so the
botanical report was made by Rev. Lewis David von Schweinitz, one of the leading
botanists of the Philadelphia region.!55 Schweinitz listed 130 species in all and for
only four of them are any localities cited which are definitely in the Lake Superior
region (although some others are said to range “to Lake Superior”): Arbutus
[Arctostaphylos] uva-ursi (“...shores of Lake Superior”); Potentilla tridentata and
Hudsonia ericoides [undoubtedly actually H. tomentosa] (‘‘Falls of Kakabeka”); and
Viburnum pubescens (‘Sault de St. Marie’). After a chance to visit with Schoolcraft
and others at the Soo, the expedition left on October 3 and arrived at Mackinac Island
the next day, where Long and his companions boarded a revenue cutter for Detroit.
They reached Philadelphia October 26.

or the first serious botanical investigation of the Canadian shore,!5® we come to
the great name of Louis Agassiz (1807—1873),!57 born in Switzerland of a long line
of Protestant ministers, trained as a physician, but called to a career as teacher and
naturalist (he became professor of natural history at Neuchatel). He had exhausted the
resources of his relatives and friends in Switzerland, who valiantly supported his
scientific publications, when Alexander von Humboldt (whose friendship he had made
in Paris) obtained for him a subsidy from the King of Prussia to make a scientific
exploration in America. On his way to the United States, Agassiz visited his friend Sir
Charles Lyell in England, who arranged for him to deliver a course of lectures at the
Lowell Institute in Boston (where Lyell had earlier lectured). Agassiz arrived in the fall
of 1846 and spent his first month traveling, accompanied on part of his tour by Asa
Gray. He promptly impressed his colleagues with his breadth of knowledge as well as
his good humor and charm and he became enormously popular. He was a gifted
lecturer and people eagerly thronged to hear him. He accepted countless invitations to
speak, in order to make enough money from lecturing to support his scientific work.
In 1847 Abbott Lawrence sponsored Agassiz for a professorship in the Lawrence
Scientific School, which he was endowing at Harvard; Agassiz could not be “Professor
of Natural History,’ since that was Asa Gray’s title, so he became “Professor of
Zoology and Geology”—and he remained in America.

Agassiz’s first teaching at Harvard began in the spring of 1848, but he continued
his view that all people, not just professionals, could benefit from scientific instruction.
Consequently, his ambitious “field trip’ to the north shore of Lake Superior in 1848
included not only nine Harvard students (two from the law school) but also six other
gentlemen: New York physicians, European naturalists, and two ‘“‘cultivated Bostoni-
ans” including the chronicler of the expedition, J. Elliot Cabot.158 One of the Harvard
College seniors on the trip was Charles G. Loring, whose older sister, Jane, had just

155schweinitz (1824); see Stuckey (1970) for further botanical remarks.

156Perhaps the reference here should be to the first serious and extensive investigation, for a few
ace feria mosses) were collected along Lake Superior in 1825 by Thomas Drummond
(?1790—1835) on Sir John Franklin’s second overland polar expedition in British North America.
The ue left Penetanguishene, on Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, on April 23 by canoe and
arrived at Fort William May 10. Hooker (1829—1840) credited many species to Upper Canada

an explicit locality given. (Dentaria laciniata at Penetanguishene is one e season on e

Superior would have been early for many poate For a summary of D mond’s career, see

Pil (1948, pp. 55—78, references on p. 266); numerous references are sea given by Stafleu &
, Taxonomic Literature ed. 2, vol. om Veg. 94. 1976), p. 685.

157 Among many references on Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, see Guyot (1886); Kelly & Burrage
(1920, pp. 4—7); Lurie (1960). See also G. R. Agassiz (1913).

42

married Asa Gray on May 4, a little more than a month before the expedition left
Boston. On February 10, the first edition of Gray’s Manual had been published, and it
is hardly surprising that Agassiz could say of the plants collected: “They were for the
most part determined on the spot with the excellent work of my friend Prof. Asa Gray
on the Botany of the Northern United States.”!59 One can imagine young Charles
Loring by the campfire on the wild Canadian shore keying down an unknown plant in
the new book by his illustrious brother-in-law! Later editions of the Manual were to
credit a number of species to Lake Superior on the basis of collections by Agassiz’s
party, for they were examined by Gray upon return of the expedition .!69

The narrative of this trip, with its scientific reports including lists of plants
(though without localities) and discussion of the vegetation (including comparisons
with the Alps), proved to be popular and sales were considerable.!6! The party spent
two weeks just getting from Boston to Sault Ste. Marie and making preparations
which included consultation with C. T. Jackson and J. W. Foster,!®2 who were then
surveying Michigan’s mineral lands, and with officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company,
whose posts on the north shore proved hospitable. On June 30, accompanied by a
dozen voyageurs to handle the paddling and camp chores, they left the Soo in one
large Mackinaw boat and two 24-foot birchbark canoes. “Our canoe,” wrote Cabot,

was distinguished by a frying-pan rising erect over the prow as figure-head, an
importance very justly conferred on the culinary art in this wilderness, where nature
provides nothing that can be eaten raw except blueberries.” The expedition arrived
back at the Soo on August 15—a month and a half later, having gone as far west as
Thunder Bay and Kakabeka Falls. (Threatening weather had forced cancellation of
plans for crossing to Isle Royale.) Agassiz’s collections alone ‘“‘occupied four barrels
and twelve boxes, mostly of large size.”

Clearly the next person to be mentioned is Canada’s famed John Macoun
(1831—1920),!63 born in Ireland, who emigrated in 1850 with his family to Ontario,
where he taught public school in Belleville, becoming professor of natural history in
Albert College in Belleville in 1868. He had early read Agassiz’s Lake Superior, from
which he “learned a great deal” and in the winter of 1868—1869 he read it again.
Almost no botanical information had been recorded from the region in the meantime,
and Macoun was asked to collect for them by two men of Montreal, including George
Barnston (1800—1883), an officer of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who had gotten

1S8Cabot’s cousin Elizabeth Cabot Cary and Louis Agassiz were married in 1850, Agassiz having

learned upon returning from the Lake Superior expedition that his first wife had died of

tuberculosis in Switzerland in July.

IS9L. Agassiz (1850, p. 154).

160Mosses, too, were collected, and were examined by Leo Lesquereux and W. S. Sullivant (see

Rodgers 1940, p. 203); in the second edition of Gray’s Manual (1856), Sullivant credits at least a

dozen uncommon mosses to Lake Superior on the basis of collections by Agassiz or Loring

161y, Agassiz (1850). Anyone who has experienced the black-flies and mosquitoes of the north

shore, admired the grandeur of the s cenery, view wed the terraces at Terrace Bay, or wished to know
is ar or

efo soil
Haunted Shore by Bruce Litteliohn & Wayland Drew (Gage Publ. Ltd., Toronto, 1975. 176 pp.)
162The Bostonians Jackson and Foster were already well known to Agassiz; see chapter 8, at notes
299 & 301.
163For a full account of his life, see Macoun’s autobiography (1922); see also Rodgers (1944b,
especially pp. 73—80, 210-214, & 300-303), based largely on the autobiography. In 1875,
acoun turned down an offer to teach school in Cheboygan, Michigan (Autobiography, p. 134)!

Systems of Dykes.

NL System of Michipicoten E-W, eee 7B SS f
N°2) System of the Pic N 380°W, Nod See Pied a, i meee mae
NG System of Neepigon N-S. s E ;

System of Black Bay N.30°K. Aon tr;

A.

S “
f t N
23 System of Thunder Cape E 30°N a Poorer e i
7 Pos _ a (ere
N°6 System of Isle Rovale E 45°, o ‘

Otter dl ‘J Pee
‘Goat peor! f-NO
Nobo Per Neh
Michupe? é
oo reine
Choye
Vidor SP f ee

SoC Goryantia
i, ry
ne

5 ANAS te

3 e of Soseph

‘ Vad Lakef : ?
oe eee

S ~2
) J fe hs a ~
1 a es wl } & 2 Loe OB SU
es \ Shhain
. ( y "da
oy £5P Ns no
Na { 4a ( or
> 32
aes ~any 4, a Re
w a j L
Dio ( ,

[are ? fraafurd's an
Map of Lake Superior, from Louis Agassiz (1850, facing p. 428).

44

some specimens on Lake Superior as early as 1860. Armed with letters of introduction
to personnel of that Company, Macoun left for Lake Superior early in July of 1869
and spent nearly two months collecting and comparing his observations with those of
his predecessor: “Agassiz placed the flora around as mostly subarctic, but I found that
that statement only held close to the lake, while I found the plants a few hundred
yards back from the lake almost identical with those north of Belleville. I saw the
cause at once, the lake water according to Agassiz was 48°F. at midsummer and 120
miles of cold water accounted for the change in flora on its shores.”!64 In 1872
Macoun again collected on the north shore, but more briefly for he was drafted en
route by Sandford Fleming, chief engineer, to serve as botanist with his exploring
party across the prairies to the Pacific, surveying a route for the railroad that had been
promised to unite British Columbia with the rest of the new Confederation. (The
Hudson’s Bay Company territories had been purchased in 1869, while Macoun was on
Lake Superior.)

Macoun received a permanent fulltime appointment to the Dominion government
in 1882, as botanist with the Geological and Natural History Survey; five years later he
was assistant director and naturalist for the survey. The government bought the
flowering plants in his herbarium, which altogether included some 50,000 to 100,000
specimens. Almost every summer he was engaged in field work in some part of Canada,
the geological survey being very broadminded about the conduct of such valuable
scientific work. In the summer of 1884 Macoun returned to the north shore, walking
almost 200 miles back from Ross Bay to Michipicoten along the route of the Canadian
Pacific Railroad, which ranged at the time from a blazed path to various stages of
construction. In his great Catalogue of Canadian Plants, published 1883—1902,
numerous records from Lake Superior localities are cited by Macoun as a result of his
own collecting efforts. Canada’s great exploring botanist retired in 1912 and lived on
Vancouver Island until his death.

164 Agassiz (1850, p. 124) actually gave the temperature as “about 40°,” not 48°, as quoted by
Macoun (1922, pp. 44-45).

Chapter 6.
LAKE SURVEYORS, AND OTHERS

Macoun’s exploits with railroad surveys in western Canada, which cannot be
discussed here but which brought him considerable fame and respect in that country,
are reminiscent of the U.S. Pacific Railroad Surveys.!®> However, in the Great Lakes
region, another kind of survey was important: surveys and mapping of the Lakes
themselves—and this work commenced before the transcontinental railroad surveys. The
first steamboat to arrive in Detroit was the historic Walk-in-the-Water, in August of
1818. The next year, she made the round trip from Detroit to Green Bay and back in
13 days. Until 1825 there was still only one steamboat west of Niagara, but by 1831
there was daily service to Detroit.166 Aids to navigation, lighthouses, data on lake
levels and weather, and standard charts became essential as commerce increased and
cities and towns developed along the shores. A big task loomed: the five Great Lakes
themselves cover some 95,000 square miles, and their total shoreline, including islands,
is close to 10,000 miles (about equally divided between Canada and the United States).

e U.S. Lake Survey (Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes) !67
was established by Congress in the spring of 1841, the upper Lakes were still sparsely

1650n the history of these surveys and of the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers
(1838—1863), which conducted them, see William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the
American West 1803—1863 (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1959. 509 pp. + maps). See also Meisel
(1929, 3: 189—220)

166Farmer (1890, p. 909).

167For the history of the Lake Survey, see Comstock (1882, ch. 1, pp. 1—47: “Historical Account
of the Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes—May, 1841, to ak 1881’ 2 the early days
are briefly described in Farmer (1890, p. 918); there is some history on pp. 2122—2126 (followed

i 1. i

y ng 1 rt
6617. 1916). The basic history, of cou in the annual reports of the Survey, which, like many
Government eg inagpes - biblogeaphicaly complicate They were, in most years, appendices to
the reports th of Engineers (before 1863, of the Topographical Engineers), which
themselves were pare to the noe of the Secretary of War, issued as a House or Senate
c nt (some year ome ye

’ ars, of th
report of the Chief of ee ae id age as a Congressional document but fortunately
ie the sam tion f the

ye
ged beginning wit ‘i oe or pli city in subsequent footnotes, the reports are merely
fisc i

ae ae may be additionally cataloged by libraries, ror may thus in fact have copies of a
iven year’s report in at least three different places. Since the reports often were required to cover
a fiscal eas ending in the middle of a field season, the officer in charge was inclined to be
annoyed by the inconvenience, and a report may be repetitive, or cover activities beyond the
technical end of its period. There is no botanical information in these reports, but the full accounts
of the activities of personnel are an invaluable source of biographical data and of itineraries of the
several collectors who are discussed in this chapter
The Lake Survey was originally headquartered in Buffalo, but the office was moved to Detroit
soon after Col. James Kearney took charge in 1845. The Survey was conducted by the Chief of

War Department) in March of 1863. In 1882, the surveys were considered completed, and the

45

46

populated, although settlers were pouring in rapidly and commerce, especially from
Buffalo to Detroit and Chicago, was growing. (To reach Lake Superior, it was still
necessary, until 1855, to portage past the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie.) There were few
lighthouses or other aids to navigation and no official charts, so that pilots had to
rely largely on their own hard-earned experience. Navigation on the Great Lakes was
especially dangerous because storms could rival those on the ocean but ships dared not
ride them out; shores were always too close. Yet, in 1841, a ship leaving Chicago had
no refuge from storms on Lake Michigan until the Manitou or Beaver Islands were
reached—and the situation on Lake Huron was similar. With a modest appropriation of
$15,000, the Lake Survey began in 1841 the systematic charting of the Lakes—before
the days of aerial photography and electric calculators (not to mention computers), so
that every mile of shore was surveyed on foot, primary triangulation points were
established in the rugged wilderness (as far as 100 miles apart across Lake Superior),
and enormous calculations were made of astronomical data (based on hundreds of
readings of stars to determine latitude and longitude precisely).!6

In 1851, the major task of the Lake Survey really began; with larger appropria-
tions, better instruments, improved methods, and more personnel, the work—previously
confined largely to harbors—progressed. An officer of the Army Engineers was always
in charge, but as activity expanded, more assistants were needed than could be spared
from the Engineers and a greater number of civilian assistants were employed, being
promoted to responsible positions as chiefs of parties after they had acquired
experience. There were steamer parties responsible for taking soundings, for primary
triangulation, and for moving parties from one place to another. In addition, there
were shore parties engaged in gathering data for mapping, doing inshore hydrography
and secondary triangulation. A shore party would consist of a chief, three or four
assistants, and the requisite numbers of chainmen, leadsmen, and boatmen to assist the
topographers, and crews for three or four six-oared boats. They had full camp
equipment and established their camps on shore; after surveying for six or seven miles
on either side of a camp, they moved to a new location. Sometimes as many as 200
men would be at work during the field season (May to October—if appropriations were
made in time). Several of these men were active plant collectors who, like the land
surveyors, were in a position to label their specimens with some precision. A number
of University of Michigan students were employed summers by the Lake Survey;
alumni and non-graduates were among the civil assistants for varying periods. Those
who collected plants were probably inspired in their botanical interests, at least in part,
by Prof. Alexander Winchell, whose botany class was required in both the classical and
the scientific (including engineering) courses at the University.

As early as 1861, N. H. Winchell acknowledged among the sources for his catalog
of the flora of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan a ‘‘collection of plants made in the
neighborhood of Fort Gratiot, near the foot of Lake Huron, by Mr. E. P. Austin,

urvey was suspended except for the issuance of charts. But appropriations for new surveys

the Army Engin
Coast and Geodetic Survey (with vas it had often been confused!) to form the National Ocean
Survey. In 1976, its functions and personnel were speak from ae i © Rockville, Marvin nd.
168Just as the final draft of this account was being completed, as if to emphasize the contrast, I
was handed a photograph covering the area from Little Traverse Bay to Whitefish Point, taken by a
ASA Landsat satellite from an altitude exceeding five miles; how incredulous the surveyors of
over a century ago would be if they knew that such photos are now taken every nine days of every
art of the terrain they so eaanks spent years covering!

47

Assistant on the Coast Survey of the lakes.”” Edward Payson Austin attended the
literary department of the University of Michigan 1857—1859 (and was therefore in
part a classmate of N. H. Winchell’s) but he did not graduate.!®9 He was an assistant
engineer with the Lake Survey from 1859 until he was discharged August 21, 1863,
for leaving his post (on northern Lake Michigan) without authority.!79 In 1859 he
was assisting in the determination of the difference in longitude between Detroit and
Fort Gratiot.17! In 1860 he was engaged in astronomical computations, observed
meteorological data at Sanilac, and was in a party on Lake Huron determining latitude
and longitude of points on the Canadian shore.!72 His plant collections have not, so
far as I recall, survived, and little more seems to be known about his natural history
activities except that he developed a specialty in beetles.!73

The collector whose name is most frequently encountered among the Lake Survey
personnel was Henry Gillman (1833—1915).!74 A scholar of broad interests, he was
born in Ireland and came to Detroit with his parents in 1850—the same year that John
Macoun emigrated to Ontario with his family. From 1851 to 1869 he was an assistant
engineer with the Lake Survey, often in charge of shore parties. From 1870 to 1876,
he was assistant superintendent of construction for lighthouses on the Great Lakes, and
thus continued to travel along the shores. He then moved with his family to Florida !75

169sSensemann (1923, p. 606 Austin is listed as a sophomore in the scientific course in the
1857— 1858 University of a zan catalog and directory, and the following year is listed among

“Students in Select Courses”--r ot in any class; his residence is given as Ann Arbor both years.
oe (1920, p Puan listing" in as a volunteer collector in ey for Winchell’s sede said
$ no

was “‘of Lake Suney”’ but this was presumably an error in transcription for “Lake Survey”
eG Suney”’ is listed in gazetteers.
170Lake Survey Report 1863 (Doc. 1184, p. 187).
171Lake Survey Report 1859 (Doc. 1024, p. 711).
172Lake Survey Report 1860 (Doc. 1079, pp. 304, 317, 385); Comstock (1882, p. 13).
173 Around 1867, Austin was associated with the office of the Nautical Almanac in Washington,
e was assistant in the observatory at Harvard University 1868—1871 but he obtained no
degree at Harvard (Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates 1636— wae and other
years). He is hagety in an 1873 directory of botanists (Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 4: 49 & 56) as living
in Washington, D.C., an ad specializing in Michigan; a supplement to that directory (ibid. 6:
1876) lists ‘ti at Cambridge, Mass., and not active. He published at least one paper on astronomy,
in 1878, and a number of papers on beetles, including his presidential address for the Cambridge
Entomological Club (Psyche 2: 217—223. 1879). Gifts from Austin of seeds of wild plants were
acknowledged in the 1867 and 1868 reports of Alexander Winchell on operations of the University
of Michigan Museum, and he also gave some insects and other specimens to the Museum
1866—1868. In 1889 the Austin collection of beetles was acquired by Michigan State iris
By then, Austin had moved west, where he devoted himself to real estate and mining;
abl magn ce with Samuel Henshaw about the sale of his collections, which were aaa in
Cambridge, is in the archives of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, I am advised in
an alana ite eae (1978) from Ann Blum, archives assistant.
174The longest account of Gillman, a a small ay: is in Natl. Cycl. Am. Biogr. 7: 359-360
(1892); see also he um in Dict. Am. Biogr. 7: 294—295 (1931) and the first 8 eds. of Who’s Who in
America. Gillm name i + perpetuated eu with at least three plants: A liverwort,
published as ae nnia gillmani C. F. Austin (Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 3: 12. 1872), was
collected by him in a cave on Au "Train Island, ae County, Mich., in 1867—evidently the first
record of a liverwort collected in Michigan, and a new species at that! (See Bryologist 38: 83.

Acad, 17: 191. 1882), without specific collection data, which were later provided in a peel at
discussion by E. S. Steele (Contr. U.S. Natl. Herb. 13: 367—369. 1911). Gillman himself (in

. G. Lloyd, Drugs Medic. N. Am. 1: 235. 1885) proposed the name Actaea iPass for a is
now usually recognized as a white-fruited form of the red baneberry, A. rubra
175Engelmann (Trans. Acad. Sci. St. Louis 3: 591. 1877) referred to “Mr. H. Gillman—late of
Detroit, now in Waldo, Florida—who has very attentively studied the Flora of the Upper Lake
country .

48

until 1878 (the year that his wife died). In 1880 he became librarian of the De-
troit Public Library, charged with its improvement; when he left that post in 1885,
the library had grown from about 40,000 volumes to about 60,000. He then served for
five years as U.S. consul in Jerusalem and while there managed to procure for
publication photographic facsimiles of some early Christian manuscripts, including the
Didache. After his retirement from diplomatic service in 1891, he resided in Detroit
when not traveling. He published a volume of poetry in 1863, during his Lake Survey
career, and a volume on the wildflowers and gardens of Palestine in 1894. He did
considerable archeological research in Michigan in the 1870’s and published a long
series of papers on that subject, especially on Indian mounds and Isle Royale mines.
According to one of his biographers, he “was one of the first to emphasize the
importance of Isle Royale as a field for scientific investigation.” !76

Gillman’s plant collections are usually adequately labeled and the ones I have seen
date from 1864 (only a few)—well after he began his Lake Survey work—through
1876, his last year supervising lighthouse construction. He was often in parties on the
Straits of Mackinac and Lake Huron in the 1850’s, on northern Lake Michigan (Benzie
to Grand Traverse counties) in 1860, and on Lake Superior in 1861 (as was E. P.
Austin), but Gillman seems not to have developed an interest in botany at that time.
The survey of Green Bay commenced in 1862, and Henry Gillman was placed in
charge of a shore party there in 1863, aided by Lewis Foote. In 1864 he collected
(sparsely) on Lake Superior while surveying at Keweenaw Bay, Copper Harbor, and
Torch Lake; and in 1865 he was in charge of a shore party, again aided by Foote,
between Eagle River and Ontonagon. This party left Detroit May 20, 1865, and
returned October 3; the site of their activity was described by their superior: “The
field assigned to this party is...without inhabitants, and where the party was for the
whole season almost cut off from communication. Occasionally a passing Indian
brought them their mails in his canoe ..?’!77 The next season, 1866, Gillman and his
party sailed from Detroit on May 25 for Whitefish Bay, on the Door Peninsula of
Wisconsin, but in 1867 he was back on Lake Superior (leaving June 7) in charge of a
topographic and hydrographic party assigned to survey from Grand Island, near
Munising, westward toward Marquette—until transferred in August to the Keweenaw
Peninsula to work on grading and preparing for measurement the Keweenaw base line
south of Portage Entry. Another portion of the south shore of Lake Superior, from
Ontonagon westward into Wisconsin, was covered by Gillman in 1868, the party
leaving Detroit May 16. He resigned from the Lake Survey before the field season of
1869,!78 and I do not know what he did that summer (he collected at Detroit in

176Krum in Dict. Am. Biogr.

177Major W. F. Raynolds, Lake Survey Report 1866 (Doc. 1285, p. 459); Gillman had assisted
then Lt. Raynolds from the south shore of the Straits of Mackinac to Little Traverse Bay in 1853.
Information on Gillman’s itineraries in this paragraph comes from the Lake Survey one. from
Comstock (1882), and from localities on specimen |

178Lake Survey Report 1869 (Doc. 1413, p. 558). Lt. Col. W. F. Raynolds, who was in charge of
the Survey, in the same year (p. 543) noted frankly, in his final report before being relieved, the
. . he Civj ma

WwIo ayn
commissions entitled them to the command of parties, while they lacked the ial ee wk such
command _ implied. fae desire of the [War] Department to make the survey ‘a school of
instruction’ for young officers of the corps has caused such frequent changes that, within is past
five years, eh different officers have been assigned to duty on the survey, whose average

49

October). Plants collected by him on Isle Royale, during his “lighthouse period,” date
from 1872, 1873, and 1874; there are other collections from Lakes Huron, Michigan,
and Superior 1871—1876, and in 1870 from Detroit and Fort Gratiot.

Gillman’s herbarium went to Princeton University and was deposited, with other
Princeton collections, in the New York Botanical Garden in 1945. He corresponded
and exchanged with many botanists, so his collections are in other herbaria as well.
Among his several short papers on Michigan plants was one on Lemnaceae (duck-
weeds), reporting Lemna minor flowering at Eaton Rapids, Michigan, June 7, 1870,
and Wolffia columbiana flowering in the Detroit River August 28, 1870.!89 In another
short note, he listed several localities on the three upper Lakes where he had found a
reportedly uncommon liverwort.!

Another very active engineer-botanist was Lewis Foote (1838—1925),!82 from the
state of New York, who entered the University of Michigan in 1861. In the summer of
1863 he assisted Henry Gillman’s party on Green Bay and collected on the Door
Peninsula in June and July. He accepted permanent appointment with the Lake Survey
as an assistant engineer in 1864 and had to leave school about ten days before final
examinations began on June 22; he was not able to return to Ann Arbor for his exams
and conferring of his degree (C.E.) until 1866. In 1864 he was again around the Door
Peninsula, but in 1865 was back with Gillman, on Lake Superior. In 1866 they were
both on Green Bay and the west shore of Lake Michigan again. Foote’s earliest
collections date from his student days (1862) or before,!83 and it is easy to imagine
that it was he who interested Gillman in collecting. Foote left the Lake Survey because
of failing health in 1874, evidently before the field season. He was in business in
Detroit for a year or two and surveyed near Kingston, Ontario, in 1877, before moving

length of service on the work, when I was relieved, did not exceed one and a half seasons in the
field. The result has been the discontent and resignation of a large proportion of the civil
employés.”
179In a letter to Miss Mary Clark of Ann Arbor, April 11, 1867 (University of Michigan
Herbarium, Allmendinger papers), Gillman stated: “The habitat of Lygodium palmatum I wrote
you of, is near Concord, Mass., discovered by the late Henry D. Thoreau—that high-priest of nature.
(You must have read his ‘Wa Iden *!) The location is now kept secret by two or three of his friends;
ut I have been promised ve imens from one of them, the ensuing season, and when I receive
them you shall be remembere . Platanthera obtusata | collected last season at ‘The Portage,’ be-
tween Lake Michigan & aes Bay, where the Canal is to be made soon.—It is rather scarce; & my
stock is exhausted from numerous demands.”
180Gillman (1870). Gillman eae several later notes on flowering Lemnaceae, a subject which
evidently interested him. Engelmann commented on flowering material of Spirodela supplied by
Gillman from Detroit in Bull. eit Bot. Club 2: 34 (1871).
181Gillman (1876).
182]n addition to Lake Survey apliad information about Lewis Foote is in the Alumni Records
Office, University of Michigan, and in unpublished manuscript in the files of the University of
Michigan Herbarium, written in 1958 ra R. Elda Evans, “Biography and Travels of Lewis Foote.
Civil Eng. and Botanist”” appeared annually
beginning in 1908, in the announcement, catalog, and register of alumni of the University of
Michigan Department of Engineering (Univ. Mich. Bull. n.s. 9(13): 168. June 1908—and later
years).
183Foote’s album of neatly mounted ‘Flowers Analyzed in 1862” (April—August) looks like the
result of a pa course at the University, although botany was then offered in the junior year
(which was the s the second year of the engineering course and hence 1862—1863 for
an All ag specime ns are from Ann Arbor, precisely dated, and a few are credited to Miss
Clar xt chapter). However, in the University of Michigan Herbarium there is also a
similar album ed s specimens from Norwich, N.Y. (his home at the time he attended the
enccin), and Cazenovia, N.Y., without dates but probably even earlier.

50

westward with his wife. He farmed and led a quiet life in Minnesota, Kansas, and Iowa,
living almost until his 87th birthday. In 1903 he presented to his alma mater two
thousand specimens collected mostly during the decade that he was mapping the
shorelines and otherwise working for the Lake Survey.

One of the interesting features of many of Foote’s collections is that the original
labels are written on neat rectangles of birchbark. These look as if they had been
prepared in the field from emergency sources, but it is more likely that they were
written picturesquely after he returned; the existence of birchbark labels in Foote’s
hand for collections made by another surveyor, O. B. Wheeler, on another lake from
Foote’s iocation at the time, strongly suggests that the labels were not prepared in the
field, despite their rustic appearance.

In 1867, Foote was at St. Clair flats in June and was then transferred to Sault Ste.
Marie, for measurement of river flow, being transferred again in August to the Niagara
River. He continued study of outflow on the Niagara River in 1868 and 1869
(including amount of water going over the falls), but in 1870 and 1871 he was in the
field on Lake Michigan. (In 1870 he stayed in Detroit until the end of July, when the
appropriations bill was finally passed and parties could be sent out.) Smoke from the
severe fires on both sides of Lake Michigan (the great forest fires in Michigan and

184See note 223 below.

; “RES
P. " j- : puntihen ‘eee r
AAP AACN ALSA OP tt of ae

It Soe
ne ad, mtr Site Exp raom Veg meh Oe
‘Lae ha ae the fof i eh. 5 OF wre Byrne. C4,

3) a “Lb
Prac, 3) fens ae, alls ORY ps a ae

Cc

Pe ae, eae] oo om os Os. White
S. CF, Ney eS Catt ah: bal nn fp ieisellacts os
sda dick, 2 —- Nw hy Cn. of f ‘
pe egg c = ow aA hs. Aa perc
rnin band, Cale S fetal fuck: iP fox ee |
Abe 6 HG Bf 122 fh bijX. g ® Rm Ee
en, £e
(Ny, Le a oa | 1.7 Whelad $e. Brnds

Labels from specimens collected by personnel of the U.S. Lake reed (all enaag reduced).
Above: Two labels in Lewis Foote’s hand, on characteristic pieces of birchbark; at left, for a
eget of Iris lacustris by himself at Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, May 31, 1866 (the same day that

illman collected the same species at the same place); at right, for a collection by O. B.

low: at left, a of Henry Gillman’s in his own hand, for a collection from Au Train
Island, Alger County, aha in 1867; at right, a label written by Lewis Foote for a specimen
collected by O. B. Whee J. C. Jones in 1870, presumably near Farquhar’s Knob, Cook
County, Minnesota (see seston 203—206).

a

Wisconsin, as well as the Chicago fire) so reduced visibility in 1871 that the shore
parties were unable to accomplish their surveying and were withdrawn early in
October.!85 In 1872 and 1873, his last seasons with the Lake Survey, Foote headed a
triangulation party on the St. Lawrence River, but he seems to have done no collecting
in these years.

It remains only to note that in the party under Foote’s charge on the east shore
of Lake Michigan May 15 to October 4, 1871, he had as one of his assistants V. M.
Spalding. He expressed his gratitude to Spalding and three others “for the ability and
cheerful perseverance with which they did everything required of them.”!86 Foote and
others suffered from bad health that season, and the helpful young assistant was
Volney M. Spalding (1849—1918), who had then just completed his sophomore year at
the University of Michigan—where he was later professor of botany and also offered
the first full-fledged course in forestry to be given in the United States.187 In a
triangulation party on Lake Superior in 1872, Spalding assisted G. A. Marr, who
wrote: ‘...left my recorder, Mr. V. M. Spalding, (who had had one season’s
experience on the survey), at Vulcan station [near the end of the Keweenaw
Peninsula].... He was landed at Copper Harbor July 4.... Much is due the extra
efforts of Mr. Spalding,” resulting in successful readings under unfavorable con-
ditions.

One of the most eminent of the surveyors was O. B. Wheeler (1835—1896),!89 a
native of Washtenaw County, Michigan, who entered the University of Michigan in
1856, took both classical and scientific courses, and received both an A.B. and a B.S.
in 1862 and an M.A. and an M.S. in 1865. He was a classmate of N. H. Winchell and
doubtless knew E. P. Austin and Lewis Foote on campus. During his senior year and
for the summer (1862) after graduation, he was assistant to Prof. F. F. E. Brunnow in
the new University observatory. In August of 1862 he became an assistant engineer
with the Lake Survey, and except for two years away he remained with the Survey
until its close in the summer of 1882.!99 He received the honorary degree of Civil
Engineer from the University of Michigan in 1879. Like a number of the former Lake
Survey personnel who had transferred to the Mississippi River Commission, Wheeler
became an assistant engineer on that Commission in 1884 and was located in St. Louis,
Missouri. He served as a member of various U.S. surveying and astronomical expedi-

185Lake Survey Report 1872 (Doc. 1559, p. 1031).

186, ake Survey Report 1872 (Doc. 1559, pp. 1104—1106).

187See Rodgers (1851, p. 46) and Dana (1953, pp. xii, 1-8). Volney Morgan Spalding (A.B.
University of Michigan 1873; Ph.D. University of Leipzig oe was one of the “greats” in the
history of botany in Ann Arbor, e s not ee as a field collector and I resist the

b

871—when almost four million acres burned in Michigan and Wisconsin, along with the city of
Chicago

188 Lake Survey Report 1873 (Doc. 1598, p. 1182).

189Information on Orlando Belina Wheeler is in Chase (1880, p. 76); Applet. Cycl. Am. Biogr. 6:
454 (1889); an obituary in Mich. Alumnus 3: 44-45 (1896); and Pe ee of the Alumni oe
Office, University of Michigan—as well as in the reports of the Lake

190Comstock (1882, pp. v & 45).

By

tions here and abroad (including observations of the transit of Venus in 1874 and
1882 and the total solar eclipse in 1878).

Wheeler’s plant collections are mostly from the north shore of Lake Superior in
the United States and “Canada West” (as it was then known), although his assignments
in the field were more widespread. His specimens are not as numerous nor as wel
labeled as those of Gillman and Foote—but I do not know what became of the
personal herbarium he presumably had, having seen only specimens distributed to
others. His chief work with the Lake Survey was in primary triangulation, astronomical
observations with much detailed computation of latitude and longitude, and office
work organizing (“reducing”) field data.!9!

, the second season of work on Green Bay, E. P. Austin headed one
section and O. B. Wheeler assisted the other section of an astronomical party
determining latitude and longitude of points in and near Green Bay, South Manitou
Island, and Beaver Island. After Austin was discharged, Wheeler was transferred to take
over his section.!92 In 1864, he was again on Lake Michigan except for making
determinations of latitude at Copper Harbor and Portage Entry on Lake Superior.
Wheeler and S. W. Robinson were in charge, in 1865, of astronomical work on Green
Bay, where they invented the heliograph as a modification of the “heliotrope” (which
was used in long-distance surveying). By cutting off the light from the heliotrope in
such a way as to make long and short flashes of sunlight corresponding to the Morse
code, telegraphic messages could be sent by mirrors long distances—over 90 miles, as
usefully demonstrated later on Lake Superior.!93

Until being transferred to Lake Michigan September 27, Wheeler in 1866 was
assigned to triangulation work on Lake Superior, where a very large triangle was to be
established between the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula (Vulcan station), Isle St. Ignace
(almost due north, along the Ontario shore), and—a hundred miles away—a third point
on the northeast shore (ultimately located at Tip Top Mt.). He was located on Isle St.
Ignace from late June until, apparently, some time in August.!94 Isle St. Ignace
became one of the principal collecting sites of his career, perhaps because the party
waited over a month for favorable conditions to read angles, without success. With
better (borrowed) instruments, the required angles were read in 1867. The parties
planned for astronomical and triangulation work on Lake Superior in 1868 did not
receive their expected new instruments in time, so were diverted to the lower Lakes,
where Wheeler helped with observations between Detroit and Ogdensburg, New York.

The season of 1869 was the first (and only) one in which the entire Lake Survey
force was confined to Lake Superior. O. B. Wheeler succeeded Henry Gillman as
“principal assistant,”!95 but continued triangulation work rather than participating in
the shore parties both that year and in 1870. In 1869 he was at the triangulation
station on Michipicoten Island in northeastern Lake Superior, where he collected and
where he was aided by D. H. Rhodes,!9© who also made some collections which

191 The last agai of the Survey (1882) eae ee “computing machines” had been used in the

office, on en say for how long; they we ulky, non-electric devices and those users who

sbeebs m di d eed nclude Wheeler, whose pean a feats must have been performed with
nothing more iigetinruhorpee than logarithms. (See Doc. 2094, pp. 2786—2790.)

192, ake Survey Report 1863 (Doc. 1184, p. 187).

193Lake Survey Report 1867 (Doc. 1325, p. 564); Comstock (1882, pp. 18 & 318).
1941 ake Survey Report 1867 (Doc. 1325, pp. 567, 583—584).

195Lake Survey Report 1869 (Doc. 1413, p. 66).

a

Scene on Isle St. Ignace, north shore of Lake Superior (see map, p. 43). (From L. Agassiz 1850,
facing p. 78.)

passed to Lewis Foote’s herbarium, with which they came to the University of
Michigan. The weather was considered very unfavorable in 1869; Lt. Col. Raynolds
considered the season to be “‘by far the worst for field parties ever known in the
history of the survey.”!97 As the officer in charge of the Survey, Raynolds seemed
particularly sensitive to the difficulties encountered by the field parties, having written
of the 1868 season:

The whole survey of this portion of the lake, extending from Duluth to opposite the

dangerous, and I cannot but rejoice that the work has been finished successfully without
an accident.198

Beginning in 1871, Wheeler evidently spent even more of his time than previously
in office work. In that year, a vacancy having occurred in the meteorology department of

196, ake Survey Report 1870 (Doc. 1447, pp. 552-553). Daniel Harker Rhodes (1838-1920)
received the C. E. degree from. the University of Michigan in 1869 and was evidently a summer

iles of main li ;
announcement, catalog, and register of alumni of the University of Michigan Department of
Engineering [Univ. ae Bull. n.s. 9(13): 172 "(dune 1908—and other years)]; and obituary in
Mich, Alumnus 27: 324. .)

197Lake Survey Report re (Doc. 1413, p. 560); see also 1870 report (p. 543).

198, ake Survey Report 1869 (Doc. 1413, p. 552).

54

the Survey, he was instructed to take charge of its computations and to inspect the
accuracy with which observations were being made; he also “had other duties to
perform, being in charge of the computing department of the Lake Survey, and having
also an unforeseen amount of astronomical observations to make during the sum-
mer ...”!99 Wheeler, who was by then one of the engineers longest employed by the
Sie was in charge of the reduction of water-level and meteorological observations
from March of 1871 to July of 1878 (after which he was temporarily assigned to
determine the Mexico-Guatemala border), in addition to his work of “‘computations for
the adjustment of the primary and secondary triangulation, and for the geodetic
positions of the points of triangulation” as well as preparing data required by the
draftsmen in drawing final charts.2°° It is no wonder that he apparently did little field
work or collecting after 1870! (Perhaps he lost interest, too, after Gillman and
Foote—who may have gotten him started—left the Lake Survey.)

We come next to the name of J. C. Jones (1841—1897),29! for some time a
mystery on herbarium labels, for his later life was not devoted to science or
engineering. He was born in Adrian, Michigan, and entered the University of Michigan
in the fall of 1865. After one semester, he left for studies at Meadville Theological
School (at that time in Pennsylvania), where he remained until June of 1867. He then
became principal at Houghton School and after a year was transferred to the
principalship of Tappan School (which he organized), both in Detroit.292 He
re-entered the University in the fall of 1869 and graduated with an A.B. degree in
1872. During the summer vacations of 1870 and 1871 he was employed as a recorder
and observer by the Lake Survey and was stationed on Lake Superior. The Survey
steamer Search left Detroit June 7, 1870, and returned October 17 after a full season
engaged in primary triangulation of Lake Superior. O. B. Wheeler and his party were
landed June 12 “near Farquhar’s Knob.”293 “Owing to severe illness, Mr. O. B.
Wheeler was compelled to leave the field, and after the 24th of September the

199} ake Survey Report 1871 (Doc. 1504, p. 1008).
200Comstock (1882, pp. 24—25).
201 Information on Joseph Comstock Jones is in the files of the Alumni Records Office, University

)
nscarns in Mich. Alumnus 3: 198 (1897). He is also mentioned (see PP. 31, 34, 35, & 37) ina

ae (Chronicle of sen Centenary Farm, 236 pp.), privately published in 1969, three
years before death of Miss Jones, who received a Ph the University of Wisconsin in
1921 and returned to Rochester, Michigan, to farm in the best modern manner. Her mother, wh
had taught schools, an I nes were married in 1889, two years after the first

ginaw
Mrs. Jones died expressing the deathbed wish that her husband marry Alice Van Hoosen. Daughter
Sarah was scarcely five when her father died.

202Letter from J. C. Jones to T. R. Chase, dated January 17, 1878 [sic, for 1879] in Alumni
Records Office.

203Farquhar’s Knob, where a triangulation site was selected and station built in 1868, was not the
s F on the L

promontory now kn Far ar Peak. It i own e Survey chart (Lake Superior
No. 3), published in 1873, as being a little west of due north from Hovland, Minnesota (Farquhar
Peak, on the ot hand, is I t of Hovland); furthermore, the altitude of

whom these features are named, was in command of the Lake Survey steamer Search in 1867 and
1868, when its party was establishing triangulation stations on Lake Superior.)

a3

remaining work at his station was performed by the recorder, Mr. J. C. Jones. It is due
to Mr. Jones, as well as to the other recorders ... to state that they proved themselves
amply qualified for positions of far greater trust and responsibility .”29

Alexander Winchell’s report on the University of Michigan Museum for 1870 states
that J. C. Jones ’72 presented a collection ‘“‘of about 200 species (500 specimens) of
unnamed plants from Farquhar’s Point, Minn., on the north shore of Lake Superior,
about ten miles from the mouth of Pigeon river.”205 Jones’ specimens of none of the
four species specifically mentioned by Winchell, including Ranunculus lapponicus
“never before discovered in the United States,’ can now be found in the University of
Michigan Herbarium, but other species include two which are not otherwise known
from Minnesota (although both are on Isle Royale): the rare fern Cryptogramma crispa
and a disjunct species of sweet cicely, Osmorhiza chilensis. Jones evidently sent at least
one specimen of the little Lappland buttercup, Ranunculus lapponicus, directly to Asa
Gray, who originally described it as a new species of anemone, A. nudicaulis, noting:
“All I know of it is from a specimen sent to me in a letter, dated August 8, 1870,
from Mr. Joseph C. Jones, then of the U.S. Steamer Search.”

Some of Jones’ specimens now in the University of Michigan Herbarium are
labeled in the hand of Mark W. Harrington and some in the hand of John F.
Eastwood,297, who was employed as an assistant in the museum in 1871, when
Harrington left for Alaska. Presumably the numerous duplicates were distributed
similarly labeled, with scanty or even erroneous data: sometimes no year, sometimes
the year given as 1869; the collector sometimes (by Harrington) identified as “Prof. J.
C. Jones” and sometimes with an “M.D.” after his name—both unwarranted appella-
tions for a student in the class of 1872. I have seen herbarium specimens collected by
O. B. Wheeler himself in addition to those of Jones from 1870, and sometimes there
are specimens from the herbarium of Lewis Foote labeled in Foote’s hand as collected
by “O. B. Wheeler & J. C. Jones’’; these are simply attributed to “North Shore Lake
Superior Minnesota” but are presumably all from Cook County.

204Lake Survey Report 1871 (Doc. 1504, p. 994).

205Report of Operations in the Museum...for the Year Ending Sept. 19th, 1871, p. 11 (Univ.
ich. gents Proc. p. 148). The distance cited from Pigeon River would (depending on route

taken) be roughly 15 miles from Farquhar’s Knob. No map or other record has been found which

indicates a ‘“‘Farquhar’s Point.” I suspect, if the plants were unnamed (and unlabeled), they were

accompanied at best with a scrap of paper or an oral statement of their origin, which erroneously

er
(acrostichoides), so it is clear that they were not all collected on a rocky summit! They probably
e from various points between the landing site on the shore and the highest elevation. (See also
next note.)
206 Bot. Gaz. - 17 (1886); the letter was also quoted, with minor errors in transcription, by
Upham ail re _ m informed (1978) by E. A. Shaw of the Gray Herbarium that the
original letter is oe in re Gray correspondence there. The “Sand bay” where the plant was
collected fe eluded Mie ucieta botanists (see Butters & Abbe in Rhodora 55: 150. 1953). It shows
ding the 187

about four miles. ‘‘Sand Bay” would therefore be the present Chicago Bay, or at least very near it.

In view of the several particularly interesting species found by lence seen of his sites would

be desirable.

Pah samples of the writing of Harrington - B. 1868, A.M. 1871) and of Eastwood (A.B. 1871,
M. 1872), see McVaugh (1970, pp. 219 & 220).

56

In 1871, while Wheeler was apparently doing desk work in Detroit, Jones was
again on Lake Superior, aiding with latitude and longitude determinations at Lester
River and Burlington stations on the Minnesota shore closer to Duluth and at Detour
station on the Wisconsin shore (south of Sand Island)298 as well as at Thone’s hill
near Marquette, Michigan (in September).20? He had been placed in charge of a
division of A. R. Flint’s triangulation party for July, and Flint commended him:
“Considering his comparative inexperience and the poor instrument furnished him, I
think Mr. Jones’s results are entitled to favorable consideration. He rejoined my party
about the Ist of August.”2!9 In 1872, Jones presented another 60 species (120
specimens) to the University of Michigan, presumably from the 1871 season although I
have not yet located one so labeled.

Whether J. C. Jones collected plants at any time before or after his summer jobs
with the Lake Survey, I do not know. One suspects that he was then merely collecting
at the suggestion of O. B. Wheeler, whom he was officially assisting in triangulation
work. Immediately after graduating, Jones became superintendent of schools at
Pontiac, Michigan, and after five years he took a similar position at East Saginaw,
where he was prominent in civic and educational affairs, especially in promoting the
free textbook system in Michigan. He received an A.M. degree from the University of
Michigan in 1875. In 1885 he moved to New York, where he was in charge of the
schoolbook department of Harper & Brothers. After that firm withdrew from the
schoolbook business, Jones became superintendent of schools in Newton, Massa-
chusetts, but soon resigned to become chief of the educational department for another
publisher (Werner) in Chicago, where he died at the age of 56.

One of the Lake Survey personnel who evidently did not go out in any field
parties, but stayed in Detroit, was John M. Bigelow (1804—1878).2!! He was born in
Vermont, studied in Ohio, and in 1832 graduated from the Medical College of Ohio
(which had been founded in Cincinnati in 1820 by Dr. Daniel Drake, the eminent 19th
century physician of the Midwest2!). Dr. Bigelow then practiced medicine for a while
in Lancaster, Ohio, where he became interested in botany and published a local flora.
His chief botanical fame results from collections made during his service as surgeon
with the Mexican Boundary Survey from 1850 until early in 1853 and, later in 1853,
as surgeon and botanist under Lt. A. W. Whipple on the Pacific Railroad Survey. En
route to the West on the latter mission, he visited in St. Louis with George Engelmann,
to whom he had sent the cacti from the Boundary Survey; and he co-authored with
Engelmann the account of the cacti in Whipple’s report published in 1856.

After continuing to collect in California and working in Washington, D.C., until
the summer of 1854, Bigelow returned to his practice in Lancaster. Lt. Whipple—now

208These stations are described by Comstock (1882, p. 314).

209 Lake Survey Report 1872 (Doc. 1559, p. 1066); Jones also served as recorder for A. R. Flint at
St. Paul in June (p. 1054).

210Lake Survey Report 1872 (Doc. 1559, p. 1100). On Aug. 5, the party again divided, some to
Tip Top (Ontario) and others to Huron Mts. (Michigan), but it is not clear to which Jones went.
The party returned to ilaseies on the steamer Search October

2110n John Milton Bigelow, see Atkinson (1878, p. 285): Noyes (1878); Burr (1930, 2:
es — Waller eee Rodgers (1942, pp. 221-228; 249-255); Ewan (1950, p. 164); Jepson
(19

op, Drake (1785-1852) collected in northern Michigan in 1842 (see Voss 1956, pp. 28—29)
and later in the same year published a very readable account: “The northern lakes, a summer resort
for invalids of the south” (Western Jour. Med. Surg. 6: 401—426. 1842).

57

Captain—ended his work in the West in 1856, when the Chief of Topographical
Engineers (the Corps under which the Railroad Surveys, like the Lake Survey, had
operated) reported: “Captain Whipple, engaged until September on Pacific railroad
survey, is now charged with the improvement of St. Clair flats, and flats of Lake
George, St. Mary’s river, and of Lake Superior.”*!3 Whipple received additional
responsibilities for lighthouses on Lakes Erie and Ontario, and remained in Detroit
with the Topographical Engineers (but not the Lake Survey) until June 1, 1861, when
he was relieved for service in the Civil War—in which he lost his life.

It seems probable that Whipple (whether on Bigelow’s suggestion or otherwise)
called his former associate to the attention of his fellow engineers in Detroit. For in
1860, Capt. George G. Meade, in charge of the U.S. Lake Survey, could report in
regard to meteorological observations: “. .. this branch of the survey has been assigned
to Assistant J. M. Bigelow, who will henceforth devote his whole attention, under my
immediate direction, to the reduction and discussion of these observations. The tables
attached to this report are but the commencement of what, it is hoped, the future will
furnish ...”; and in regard to water-level observations, he reported that late in the
summer he ‘‘was able to assign Assistant J. M. Bigelow permanently to this duty, as
well as to the meteorological department ...”2!4 Bigelow remained as assistant
engineer in charge of water-level and meteorological observations until the end of
December, 1866.2!5 Hundreds of pages of meteorological data were published by him
in the reports of the Lake Survey—and, I suspect, are largely overlooked today.

Although I. A. Lapham and others had long been interested in water-level
fluctuations in the Great Lakes, observations by the Lake Survey were rather irregular
before 1860, being taken by temporary gauges wherever surveys were being carried on.
In 1859, four self-registering tide gauges and many other gauges and meteorological
instruments were installed at a total of 19 stations around the Great Lakes; observers
were employed to make daily observations and send the records monthly to De
troit.2!6 It was thus John Bigelow in 1860 who began the regular charting and
interpreting of lake-level fluctuations, an operation continued to this day by the Corps
of Engineers.

After a little over six years with the Lake Survey, Bigelow served a year as
physician to the Marine Hospital in Detroit. The Detroit Medical College, organized in
1868, began instruction in February of 1869 and Dr. Bigelow became a member of the
first faculty, as “Professor of Medical Botany.”2!7 His course, according to the
catalog, ‘“‘will be illustrated by specimens gathered fresh in excursions into the country,
and will give students the opportunity of gaining a practical acquaintance with the
medicinal plants of this climate, a knowledge of which is invaluable to every
physician.” “This course,” the catalog continues, “will be optional with the students,
and will cost an extra fee.’218 Bigelow resigned in 1870 and was listed as “Emeritus
Professor of Medical Botany and Materia Medica” until his death. From 1869 to 1873,

213Report of J. J. Abert, Topographical Engineers, to Hon. Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War,
1856 (Doc. 894, p. 358); Whipple’s relief is recorded in the 1861 report (Doc. 1118, p. 526).

214, ake Survey Report 1860 (Doc. 1079, pp. 305—306).

215Comstock (1882, p. 18).

216Comstock (1882, p. 12).

2170n the history of the Detroit Medical College, see discussion of A. B. Lyons in the next
chapter, and the references in note 257.

218Detroit Medical College, Annual Announcement and Catalogue for 1870, p. 4.

58

however, he served as surgeon in charge of the Marine Hospital—a post first held
(1857—1861) by Dr. Zina Pitcher.2!9 After retiring from practice, he moved to a farm
outside Detroit and manufactured a proprietary preparation of opium, a watery extract
called “‘svapnia.” 229

While Bigelow was in Detroit, George Engelmann was working on his revision of
the North American species of Juncus—the true rushes, published in 1866 and
1868.22! Engelmann did not include Bigelow among those whose aid he specifically
acknowledged in sending observations and specimens, but his collections are frequently
cited,222 as is one of Juncus stygius by O. B. Wheeler from the north shore of Lake
Superior .223

Although he was not associated with the Lake Survey, Albert E. Foote
(1846—1895)224 is most appropriately mentioned next. Foote was a native of New
York state, who received his M.D. from the University of Michigan in 1867, after
which he served a year as an assistant in the chemistry department. In 1869 he joined
the faculty of Iowa State College, where he remained until 1876, when he settled in
Philadelphia and established himself as a dealer in minerals and objects of natural
history.

In the summer of 1867, Foote was one of 17 students and others who
accompanied Alexander Winchell on an expedition to the mining region of Lake
Superior, including Isle Royale.225 (J. T. Scovell [1841—1915] collected about 50
plants on this trip, which was largely a non-botanical one.) The next year, as Winchell
wrote:

Dr. Foote, with unusual, and extremely creditable zeal for science, organized, at his own
risk, an extensive expedition to the north shore of Lake Superior and the adjacent

islands. The expedition left in the latter part of April and returned during September.
The geological ae of the University furnished the party with a tent, a camp-chest
aciliti . as

his Alma Mater upon the services of her Alumni, Dr. Foote has furnished my department
with a complete set of the geological, zodlogical and botanical specimens collected.226

On the 1868 expedition, 13 students accompanied Foote.227 The plants collected are

219Farmer (1890, p. 924).
220Proc. Am. Pharm. Assoc. 1877: 28 (1877); Noyes — Waller (1942, p. 331).

221A revision of the North American species of the us Juncus, with a description of new or
imperfectly known species, Trans. Acad. Sci. St. Louis 5 424— 458 (1866); 459—498 (1868).
222Engelmann’ s standard collection, distributed with printed labels as “Herbarium Juncorum
Boreali-Americanorum Normale,” includes at least 11 numbers collected by Bigelow near Detroit in
1866 and 1867. Sheets of some specimens now in the herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden
bear what are spores baa labels for these exsiccatae and these sometimes have more prec
data than ‘‘near Detroi n fact, some of them reveal that the specimens were collected “near
Sandwich Canada” ile Bee Windsor, Ontario] and not in Michigan at all. See also note 310.
223A Wheeler specimen of this rather rare species in the nea of Michigan Herbarium is from
Isle ee ion ace Aug. 5, 1866, and is labeled in Lewis Foote’s hand on a piece of birchbark. (The
Herbar copy of Engelmann’s monograph, incidentally, was O. B. eeler’s and was presented to
the cel te along with much other literature, by the daughter of A. B Lyons (see next chapter)
after his death.)

2240n Albert Edward Foote, see Kraus (1958).

225 Annual Report on the Museum of the University of Michigan, 1867, pp. 2—3 (Regents Proc.,
pp. 235—236).

226 Statement of Operations in the Museum of the University of Michigan... for the Year Ending
Sept. 24th, 1868, pp. 3, 8—9 (Regents Proc., pp. 293, 299).

227Kraus (1958).

59

sometimes attributed to Foote and sometimes to “University Party.’ About 350
specimens, representing 275 species, apparently all from Isle Royale, were received by
the University.22© The principal set of duplicates seems to be at Ohio State University.
One of the most interesting species collected by Foote at Isle Royale (Smithwick
Island, according to the duplicate at Ohio State) was the mountain-cranberry, or
lingenberry of the Scandinavians (Vaccinium vitis-idaea). The species has never been
found in the state since (although I have searched Smithwick Island—and elsewhere—
for it) and we list the status of it in Michigan as probably extinct228 —I hope not
extirpated by A. E. Foote!

We can only speculate whether Foote met any of the Lake Survey botanists who
were on Lake Superior. They were all preceded, incidentally, on Isle Royale by
Thomas C. Porter (1822—1901),229 of Pennsylvania, who collected there in 1865. Porter
was at Sault Ste. Marie and Ontonagon late in July, and spent the morning of August
2 at Isle Royale. On the return trip, the steamer stopped long enough for collections at
Portage River (Houghton Co.), Marquette (including the mouth of Carp River), and

tour.230

In Canada, personnel of the Geological [later “‘and Natural History”] Survey did
some early collecting about the upper Great Lakes even before the work of Macoun
for that survey. Robert Bell (1841—1917)23! was first appointed to the staff of the
Geological Survey—then located in Montreal—in December of 1856, before he was 16;
half a century later he retired, after having acted as director of the Survey 1901—1906.
In the summer of 1860, while still a civil engineering student at McGill University, he
assisted Alexander Murray in explorations on the southeastern and southern shores of
Lake Superior; after Murray left for Sarnia, Bell led the party along the north shore of
Lake Huron to the Bruce Mines and Manitoulin Islands (where he had been the
previous season also). He collected both birds and plants; in the report on the latter,
published in 1861, the identifications were credited to B. Billings, Jr. 232 About 275
species were listed, including some bryophytes and lichens, almost always with
localities and dates—certainly the first records for many of the sites indicated. A
“supplementary list” of 37 trees and shrubs concluded the report; only a few of these
were included in the main list, but the supplement gave no dates and presumably
represented observations rather than collections. Some of the dates are clearly
inconsistent and must represent typographical (or other) errors, but it appears that
there were three principal excursions: The last two weeks of June from Whitefish Bay
to Keweenaw Bay, with collections from the Two Hearted River, Grand Marais, Grand
Island, Marquette, L’Anse, and other points (fewer on the return trip); July 19-21 at
Sault Ste. Marie, and then an excursion northward as far as Namainse [sic—usually

228See Mich. Bot. 16: 107 (1977).

229On Thomas Conrad Porter, see Britton (1901) and Ewan (1950, pp. 67—72; 284—285); Ewan
cites several earlier biographical sketches, but Porter’s Lake Superior excursion is generally not
mentioned by biographers.

230See Heme (1923) pe Porter’s itinerary and lists of some of the rarer species, as recorded in a
letter of Aug. 1, 1892, to W. J. Beal.

2310n Robert Bell (C. E. McGill 1861; M. D. McGill 1878), one of Canada’s leading explorers, see
Applet. Cycl. Am. Biogr. 1: 227 (1886); Kelly & Burrage (1920, pp. 92—93); and, especially, Ami
(1927).

232Braddish Billings, Jr. (1819-1871) was a leading amateur botanist of Ottawa. For biographical
ae? see William G. Dore in Trans. Roy. Canad. Inst. 33 (Il): 95—96 (1962 [“1961”]) and in the
Commentary accompanying his 1968 facsimile reprint of Billings’ list of plants caleeied in the
aay of Ottawa during 1866.

60

altered to Mamainse], with records from sites around Gros Cap, Goulais Bay,
Batchawana Bay, and Pancake Bay, ending August 23; and then from September 10 to
October 6 the records are from St. Joseph’s Island, Bruce Mines, the Thessalon and
Mississaugi Rivers, Manitoulin and La Cloche Islands.2

During the summer of 1866, Montreal physician John Bell (1845—1878) collected
plants around northern Lake Huron, from Owen Sound to St. Joseph Island. He was

233The localities cited in Bell’s list are mostly hie crmacsoi today. “Sou-sou-wa-ga-mi Creek”’ where
collections were reported June 29 and (app tly on the return trip) July 9 (other dates
inconsistent) was between Huron River and Gra ‘it Point, Marquette Co., Michigan. The na
must therefore refer to what now is called Iron River (the outlet of Independence Lake), ened
was known as the Yellow Dog River long before 1860; the ‘“So-Sa-Wa-Ga-Min ng Club” w
established at its mouth in 1898. Of course, identifications as well as dates and localities need to be
taken with caution. ‘‘Loiseleuria procumbens” from the Two Hearted River was in reality almost

f a.
1964.—stations since rediscovered). Another report of a far-northern species, ““Cassiope “hypnoides,”
from La Cloche Island is doubtless also a major misidentification.

Linear-leaved sundew, Drosera linearis, a species a described by John Goldie in 1822 from
his 1819 collections at Lake Simcoe, Ontario. (Photo by F. W. Lewis in 1961 at Dorcas Bay, Bruce
Peninsula, Ontario

61

accompanying his older brother, Robert Bell, who was then professor of chemistry and
natural science at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, and still employed summers
by the geological survey. Drummond Island (Michigan), in addition to Cockburn Island
and St. Joseph Island, was given special attention botanically. Bell’s list, which includes
a few bryophytes and lichens and has good locality data, was published in 1870 and
makes no mention of previous work, such as N. H. Winchell’s on Drummond Island234
in 1860 or his own brother’s on Manitoulin and elsewhere the same year.

In the summer of 1881, Robert Bell, by then a physician as well as a surveyor,
and assistant director of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Canada,
collected plants on an exploration in the wilderness along the Michipicoten River (well
above its mouth on Lake Superior) and northward across the divide to the Moose
River. His collections were listed, without very specific localities, by Macoun.235
Bryophytes and lichens were included.

A few words about the east side of Lake Huron are in order here, but the
Canadian basin of that lake deserves a fuller historical treatment. One of the first to
collect in this area—and barely in it at that—was the Scotsman John Goldie
(1793—1886),236 who later spent some years in Russia before returning to Ontario to
retire. Most of his collecting was closer to the lower Lakes or even farther east, but on
June 27, 1819, he took a carriage from York [Toronto] to Lake Simcoe, where he
botanized until July 5. In his report on the collections of that season, published in
1822, two species new to science were described from Lake Simcoe: the linear-leaved
sundew, Drosera linearis, and the prairie buttercup, Ranunculus rhomboideus.

In his great Flora Boreali-Americana (published 1829—1840), Sir William Hooker
cited a large number of species from “‘Lake Huron” on the basis of collections received
by him from a “Dr. Todd,’ who collected in 1826.237 Hooker also mentioned
Goldie’s Lake Simcoe discoveries as well as collections by Drummond23® and (farther
south) by David Douglas.239

John Macoun collected in the vicinity of Owen Sound in 1871, and the east shore
of Lake Huron was explored more thoroughly during July and August of 1873 by
John Gibson and Macoun, both then of Albert College. Their report, published the
same year, was the first to call attention to the unusual botanical features of the Bruce
Peninsula, which subsequent explorations have continued to uphold as one of the most
interesting areas around the Great Lakes. Macoun and Gibson reported on rare plants
in Ontario in 1875, noting the occurrence of several of the species at various Michigan
localities on the authority of Henry Gillman, who evidently corresponded with
Macoun, his fellow Irish contemporary.

234List in A. Winchell (1861, pp. 328—330).

235Macoun (1883).

2360n John Goldie, see his posthumously published diary for 1819, which is prefaced on pp. 3—5
with a biographical sketch presumably prepared by his son James (see Penhallow 1897, p. 8); the
diary was republished, with a biographical sketch, in 1967 (Spawn 1967; see also Ewan 1968). On
his 1819 collections, see Goldie (1822).

237See Barnhart (1965, 3: 388), who estimated about 200 citations of C. C. Todd’s collections.
Hooker refers, for example, to ‘“‘My specimens from Dr. Todd, gathered at Lake Huron” (1: 113).
238See note 156.

239See chapter 8. David Douglas and John Goldie had been fellow students at the botanic gardens
in Glasgow, where they were protégés of William Hooker.

Chapter 7.

FACING THE 20th CENTURY: THE RISE OF
LOCAL SOCIETIES AND COLLECTORS

At the middle of the 19th century, statewide and county societies dedicated to
the practical fields of agriculture and horticulture were beginning to flourish in most of
the new states of the Midwest. These sometimes published early floristic lists (such as
Lapham’s for Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota and Wheeler and Smith’s for Michi-
gan—to be mentioned later), for their transactions and reports were among the few
local serials of the time. However, more strictly academic societies, often encouraging
natural history collections, were soon thriving. Some of those in Wisconsin and
Minnesota have already been mentioned.

n the metropolis of Michigan, the Detroit Scientific Association was organized
March 27, 1874, “with the purpose of establishing a permanent museum, and
cultivating a love for the study of natural history and general science.”249 Henry

illman was elected one of its three curators and A. B. Lyons (to be discussed shortly)
was cabinet-keeper. A museum was begun two months later and was moved frequently
as it expanded, finally being relocated from the Detroit Medical College to the Public
Library, which assumed control of the collections in 1885 (the year that Gillman
retired as librarian).24

Much older than the Detroit Scientific Association were similar organizations in
Flint and Grand Rapids. The Flint Scientific Institute was organized in February of
1853.242 The next year, among the committees established was a “Committee on the
Flora” which was “to report upon the indigenous plants, particularly the types, genera,
and species peculiar to the region.” The Institute held regular meetings once or twice a
week; it lobbied actively in behalf of a state geological survey, circulating petitions in
“all parts of the state” which, it felt, had an important influence in securing legislative
action for the survey of 1859—1860 under the direction of Alexander Winchell.243
The organization never fully recovered from the inroads on its membership occasioned
by the Civil War. In 1877 its library and collections were transferred in trust to the
Union School District of Flint to be preserved and maintained; the Institute remained
as a corporate body, but it had essentially suspended operations. Like many such
organizations, its founding is more precisely documented than its demise, since there
was no formal disbanding. It evidently issued no publications other than its constitu-
tion.

The first president and guiding spirit of the Flint Scientific Institute was Daniel

240 Farmer (1890, p. 714). Essentially the same Prieegs of the Association is in Burton (1922, 1:
849-850). pea it lasted into the 20th century.

241 Farmer (1890, pp. 761—762).

2420n the Flint prea Institute, see Clarke in Ellis (1879, pp. 148-151); Meisel (1929, 3:
169); nig aioe (197

43Dr. Manly Miles, ee of Dr. Daniel Clarke and also practicing in Flint, became
Winchell’s zoological assistant and later went on to a distinguished career in agricultural education.

62

63

Clarke (1811—1884),244 who received his M.D. from Harvard in 1839 and came to
Genesee County, Michigan, in 1840, practicing there until his death (except for a short
return to Massachusetts 1845—1847). Dr. Clarke, despite the demands of his practice
and his civic activities, found time to collect plants extensively, especially in the Flint
region, and to exchange widely. His herbarium of over 5000 sheets was purchased in
1891 by the Agricultural College (now Michigan State University).245 His collections
from Flint and elsewhere in Genesee County are among the first major ones from the
interior of the state after those of the first survey under Douglass Houghton, for they
are mostly from the 1860's and early 1870's.

The Grand Rapids Lyceum of Natural History24® was founded in 1854 and held
meetings for the presentation of papers and discussion. Like the Flint Scientific
Institute, it intended to develop a museum and library, but it did not do so before,
like the Flint group, it suffered from the Civil War. Following the war, some of the
members of the inactive Lyceum met with the enthusiastic Grand Rapids Scientific
Club, a student organization at the Union [later Central] High School. The two groups
merged, as of January 2, 1868, forming the Kent Scientific Institute. An agreement
was reached with the high school to house the museum and library of the institute
(collections having already been assembled by the students).

Among the few publications of the Kent Scientific Institute was a catalog of the
flowering plants of the Lower Peninsula,247 listing also ferns and one alga. This work
claimed to add 275 species and varieties to the earlier catalog by N. H. Winchell; it is
nowhere claimed that these, or the total list of some 725 species, were necessarily
represented in the herbarium of the institute.248 The list lacks any geographical or
ecological data. However, several species and varieties alleged to be new to science are
described with extreme brevity.249 Nathan Coleman (1827—1887),2°° the author,
evidently lived for about three years (1872—1874) in Grand Rapids, where he was a
school teacher and a member of the Kent Scientific Institute.25! He was born in
Massachusetts and evidently had some interest in Iowa, where he spent his summer
vacation in 1873 and where he had also been in 1868 and/or 1869.25? Soon after his

2440n Daniel Clarke, see Beal (1902b) and Burr (1930, 2: 464). Harrington (1905, 3: 1470) gives
his birth as April 10, 1811, in Dedham [Mass.] and I am assuming that date is more accurate than
the 1812 one given by Beal. There is no doubt that Beal erred in giving the date of Clarke’s M.D.
as 1

245Beal (1899, p. 103).

2460n the history of this and related Grand Rapids institutions, see Baxter (1891, PP Chats 250);
Hendrickson (1973). I have also received helpful information in letters from W. D. Frankforter,
present director of the Grand Rapids Public Museum, and his predecessor, Frank L. ae aa
247Coleman (1874); see also Baxter (1891, p. 276).

248A] Although Baxter (1891, p. 250) states that the “herbarium has some 725 species of plants,
collected by a leman.”” Among the collections received by the University of Michigan in 1974
(see below), a 12 were attributed to Coleman but even they bore no labels explicitly stating
that they were athe by him. The fate of Coleman’s specimens remains unknown, unfortu-
nately.

249Most of these were not included until very recently in the Gray Index, although two of them
were not only indexed earlier but also accepted as varieties in Gray’s Manual: Polygonum
amphibium var. stipulaceum Coleman and Chelone glabra var. linifolia Coleman

250The only elseniey obituary of Coleman seems ms be a very brief one iy Webb (1887), which
says nothing of botanical work or residence in Mich

SlwW. D. Frankforter informs me (1977) that lad is listed, as a teacher, only in a 1873—74
and 1874—75 Grand Rapids City Directories. For a clue on dates see also note 254 belo
252See Bot. Gaz. 2: 107 (1877).

64

Michigan list was published, he appears to have moved to Connecticut, where his
address was given with several short notes published in Botanical Gazette 1876—1878.
From 1884 until his death he was professor of mathematics and natural science at
Wiley University in Marshall, Texas. He must have been quite interested in plant
variation, to judge from his few published notes, including one253 itemizing observa-
tions around Grand Rapids 1873—1874 and another254 presumably based in part on
his Michigan experience.

In 1902 the Kent Scientific Institute became the Kent Scientific Museum255 and
in 1936 the name was again changed, to the Grand Rapids Public Museum (to reflect
the fact that it was a municipal institution, not a Kent County one). The herbarium,
which had been stored since 1937 in an unused public school building, was placed on
indefinite loan at Aquinas College, in Grand Rapids, when a new museum building
opened in 1940 with no suitable facilities for such collections. When Aquinas found
itself unable to continue to offer space for its safekeeping, the herbarium was placed in
1974 on permanent loan to the University of Michigan Herbarium, where the material
has been carefully remounted and restored. Nearly 4400 Michigan specimens, collected
around or before the turn of the century, are included. Among these are about 600
from the Detroit Scientific Association, some by Henry Gillman but the bulk collected
or assembled by A. B. Lyons, whom we should digress to consider.

A. B. Lyons (1841—1926)25® was born of missionary parents in Hawaii, where he
attended Oahu College. He graduated from Williams College, in Massachusetts, in 1865
and later entered the medical school of the University of Michigan, where he received
his M.D. in 1868. For the rest of his long life he was a Michigan resident, except for
the years 1888—1895 when he returned to Hawaii as professor of chemistry at Oahu
College and chemist to the Hawaiian government. The Detroit Medical College257 was
organized about the time that Lyons was finishing his studies in Ann Arbor and when
it began to admit students in February of 1869, Lyons (who also assisted in chemistry)
was among them, receiving the ad eundem degree of M.D. at the first annual
commencement exercises June 8, 1869.258 He then became professor of chemistry in
the College,?58 serving until 1881, when he resigned during a faculty schism259 and

253Coleman (1877).
254Without title, Bot. Gaz. 1: 64 (1876), including the comment: “In 1872—3—4, I very
frequently found Polygonum amphibium with salver form stipules. ... I also found P. Careyi with
salver form stipules. I wrote to Prof. — but could not learn that he had ever seen this feature.
e a season I found the same variation... around Bloomfield, Conn.” It is odd that in his Bot.
Gaz. , Coleman never ici that in "1874 he had validly published names for some of the
see pa eae in Michig
255 According to giao (1973, p. 148), in 1904 the Institute gave up title to its museum and
library to the school board—and the Institute “gradually disappeared.”
2560On Albert Brown Lyons, see Atkinson (1878, P. 518); aoe pee i 294-295); Burton
(1922,..5:: 216— ser Additional information is in the files of Alumni Records Office,
University of Michigan
2570n the history of the vi eae College, which was first located on the grounds of Harper
Hospital, see Farmer (1890, 733); Hickey (1894); Detroit College of Medicine (1900); Burr
(1930, 1: 511—535); tae (1968 ); and the annual catalogs of the College. In 1885 it merged
with the Michigan College of Medicine, which had been organized in 1879, to form ek ria it
College of Medicine—which ultimately became the Wayne State University School of Medic
258Detroit Medical College, Annual Announcement and Catalogue for 1870. The same se esiee
for 1871-1872 notes that ‘Prof. A. B. Lyons, whom ill health obliged to resign a year ago, has
now fully recovered and will resume his old po osition as signe ssor of Chemistry.” The full title was
apparently enlarged in 1877 from “Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology” to add ‘“‘and Director
of the Chemical Laboratory.’

65

became consulting chemist for Parke, Davis & Company, with which firm he was
associated until 1887. In September of 1897 he became chief chemist and in 1898
secretary for Nelson, Baker & Company, manufacturing pharmacists in Detroit, and he
was a director of that firm at the time of his death. An active member of the Detroit
Academy of Medicine2®9 and other organizations, he served as an editor of the Detroit
Review of Medicine and Pharmacy, as editor of Pharmaceutical Era, and for 20 years
(1900—1920) as a member of the revision committee of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia.

Lyons’ principal botanical publication, and one which emphasizes the importance
of natural products to the early pharmaceutical industry, was an alphabetical di-
rectory2®! of plant names and synonyms, including all genera of flowering plants
(except grasses and sedges) native in North America and species of medical or
economic importance, with fully indexed names from the pharmacopoeia, vernacular
names in several languages, and medicinal properties. With a reputation as an authority
on plant synonymy and nomenclature, Lyons intended this work “‘to meet the
practical needs of the retail druggist, who is often called upon to supply some root,
bark or herb of which only an unfamiliar popular name is known to the customer.” In
1877 Dr. Lyons read a paper on the indigenous medicinal plants of Michigan before
the Detroit Academy of Medicine, and it was published early the following year in two
installments in The Detroit Lancet.

When the Detroit Scientific Association was founded, Dr. Lyons was a charter
member and its first cabinet-keeper for several years. In April of 1875 he wrote to
Miss E. C. Allmendinger of Ann Arbor: “I shall be glad to show you also the
beginnings of a museum which we have made in the Detroit Scientific Association . . .
Practically I have at present the supervision of the herbarium of the Assoc", which is
nothing very extensive as yet... And the next month he wrote: “Our botanical
specimens we are putting up on sheets about 14’ X 16’. Some we have simply glued to
the sheet. Others we have attached with strips of paper. We have not yet decided how
to arrange the herbarium as a whole—I have difficulty making out Solidagos—Is that a
unique experience, I wonder? Mr. Gillman told me ‘he took them in hand one season
& mastered them in a few days’ When I asked him to help me name them, however, I
found he was as often puzzled as myself. We could not agree, with ‘Gray’ before us,
even.”263 In August, he again referred to his activities: “I intend, if I ever have time

259Hanawalt (1968, p. 54).

260Also active in the pa Academy of Medicine (founded in 1869) was an 1865 Williams
College classmate of Lyons’, Dr. Leartus Connor, prominent Detroit physician, gree r, and medical
historian (see hi ® “Historical sketch of the deceased founders of the Detroit Academy of Medicine,”
Jour. Mich. ihe Med. Soc. 7: 291—295. 1908). Connor was for a time co-editor with Lyons of
the Detroit Review of Medicine and Pharmacy.

261The full title of this 467-page work, published in 1900 by Nelson, Baker & Co., is ‘Plant
Names Scientific and Popular including in the case of each plant the correct botanical name in

i om

with their pharmacopoeial names, the principal food plants of the world and all others of any

economic importance, giving especial prominence to those which are indigenous in the United

States”! A second, revised and enlarged, edition (630 pp.) was published in 1907 with only a

slightly condensed and more modest title.

2621 etter of April 7, 1875, in Allmendinger papers, University of Michigan Herbarium.

263Letter of May 26, 1875, in Allmendinger papers, University of Michigan Herbarium. The

specimens as received in Ann Arbor in 1974 from the Grand Rapids Public Museum were still

mounted in the same two ways, on rather thin paper. After a hundred years, they have been
ounted on better paper (the old collection evidently suffered water damage at some time). The

original labels of the Detroit Scientific Association have, of course, been retained; those for

66

to over haul Mr O. B. Wheeler’s plants, many of which are from Lake Superior—Mr W.
offers us specimens whenever he has duplicates—”’264 It is quite clear that there was
an active group of dedicated amateur botanists in Detroit in the early 1870's, including
both physicians and personnel of the Lake Survey. How or when the herbarium of the
Detroit Scientific Association got to Grand Rapids (or why!) seems now to be
unknown.

The rest of the Grand Rapids Public Museum herbarium consists—as far as
Michigan is concerned—largely of collections by the extremely active group of amateurs
centered around Emma J. Cole (1845—1910),265 who evidently began collecting about
1876 and published an excellent flora of the Grand Rapids area (including part of
adjacent Ottawa County) in 1901. Miss Cole was born in Milan, Ohio, but the family
moved soon to Michigan and she attended schools in the Grand Rapids area. She
entered Cornell University in 1876 and remained three years. Later, she studied botany
one summer under E. S. Burgess at Martha’s Vineyard, and another summer with W.
W. Rowlee. From 1881 until her retirement in 1907, she taught at Central High
School, where an active botanical club was organized in June of 1896, including
former students as well. She seems to have influenced a large number of students and
others with her enthusiasm for botany, and several went on to college and/or careers in
the field.26© Well over 100 Michigan collectors are represented in her herbarium, most
of them local Grand Rapids people although some represent exchange contacts. Miss
Cole’s own collections, together with those of her friends and pupils, are valuable for
documentation of the flora of a now-populous part of the state nearly a century ago;

Gillman’s specimens are in his own handwriting; most of those for Lyons’ and O. B. Wheeler’s

who the collector was. Many specimens with Lyons indicated as donor are from ‘“‘Lake Superior”;
Lyons’ own collections oe seem to be mostly from Ann Arbor (while he was a student, e.g.
1867) and the Detroit a

264 Letter of — vs eon in Allmendinger papers, University of Herbarium.

e Cole, see Beers (1900, pp. 418—419); Voss (1955, 81); and unpublished
material narenie by the Department of Botany, University of Michigan, 46 holders of the Cole
Fellowship
266A number of her associates are mentioned in her flora (1901, pp. v— ~ apr 10 0
private herbaria assembled in Grand Rapids besides her own. Among these was the colle sot ye
Charles W. Fallass (1854-1942), who moved to Petoskey in 1898; I ete lsewhere hag some
notice of his work (Voss, 1955). The most prolific collectors amon of s Cole’s

were W. Earle Mulliken, Homer C. Skeels (1873—1934), and George D. gp Me (1866— 1895) Sones
was in charge of the herbarium of the Kent Scientific Institute for a period in the 1880’

Nat. Or. ¢ Oly Fer 6 CLC€ KIS Fe,
mans a poor ag othe > <i ’ ot Herbarium. Emma J. Cole.
Com. Name SOctle> we he 5;

i Coe
~ a fe
‘peorepe c afne4 id

oo sepa

4 “say ey
; viet ke Sang (Capevnd Karel Lire.
. : oo Lf te (PFS & |
Loc, X"¥ Ace Y a _Date,. Cou ref 2. + 0 gS ce |
|Donor, 4 8: Gyereo, ae ee ae a ae

DETROIT SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION,

Left: Label written by A. B. Lyons for the herbarium of the Detroit Scientific Association. Right:
Label written by Emma J. ce (Both labels reduced.)

67

furthermore, they include the type material of several Crataegus described by C. S.
Sargent—including Crataegus coleae, a hawthorn which he named267 for the collabo-
rator who supplied him with 20 new species. (Sargent visited Grand Rapids in 1901.)
At her death (on a collecting trip in Mexico), Miss Cole left the residue of her estate
to establish a fellowship in botany at the University of Michigan.

The Ann Arbor Scientific Association was formally organized—after preliminary
discussions—on April 10, 1875, with six charter members.268 As with similar
organizations, meetings were held frequently for presentation of papers and discussion.
The membership included local amateurs and teachers as well as University of Michigan
people. At the meeting of June 5, 1875, two of the non-University members, “Miss
Mary H. Clark and Miss E. C. Allmendinger were made a committee to make out a list
of plants found growing within a radius of four miles of Ann Arbor.” Miss Clark died
suddenly on the last day of that same month, but at the meeting of December 4,
1875, Miss Allmendinger ‘“‘from the Committee on the ‘Flora of Ann Arbor,’ made a
final report, which was accepted.” The report269 is mostly a list, with very few precise
localities, but it is a valuable record of native and introduced species a century ago.
The author noted that 16 of the 848 species listed were introduced and that two of

267 Sargent, Trees and Shrubs 1: 7 (1902).

268QOn the Ann Arbor Scientific Association, see its Proceedings (1876); it is also discussed on pp.
318—323 of an unpublished manuscript by H. H. Bartlett, “Botany at the University of Michigan
through the First Century, 1837—1937,” in the Bartlett papers, University of Michigan Herbarium.

269 Allmendinger (1876). This was republished with very few changes (other than correction of
numerous typogr raphical errors) as “Flora of Washtenaw County” in Chapman (1881, pp.
195—206).

DEATEHOLTTL

eview of Ijedicine und {aronacy,

OFFICE, 94 CASS STREET,

Deiscit SAL. £2 - EY I~

ARTUS CO YR, M.D. L

LEA
Editors
ALBERT B. LYONS, M. D. f

ye. posary (3 Lowe
Poy Quem 0 bake fofire — 4 0000
Pez [E- triwt eS Pe @ fr oe:
pot & GA paw ye Ea ea

Letterhead (slightly reduced) of the Detroit Review of Medicine and Pharmacy (see footnote 260),
with beginning of a letter from A. B. Lyons to Elizabeth C. Allmendinger.

68

these, Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) and bur grass (Cenchrus) “will give trouble in
the future if not soon exterminated.” Only a single volume of Proceedings of the
Association, for the year ending May 1, 1876, was published. In the Allmendinger
papers at the University of Michigan Herbarium are notices of meetings through
December 1, 1877, but the organization lingered on until May of 1886.270

Elizabeth C. Allmendinger (1837—1909),271 instructor of botany at Ann Arbor
High School since 1873, was a member of a pioneer Ann Arbor family. Her nephew,
George F. Allmendinger, who lived with her, presented her herbarium to the University
of Michigan after her death. During the 1868—1869 year and apparently one or two
others, she taught at negro schools in the South. In the 1870’s she was assisting Prof.
Mark Harrington—and later his successor, Prof. Volney Spalding—in arranging the
collections of the University, to which she devoted a great deal of effort, mostly on a
volunteer basis. (She was permitted to keep duplicates for her own herbarium.272) In
her papers now at the University Herbarium is an undated [18792] memorandum
signed by V. M. Spalding: “The Herbarium and Botanical Workroom are placed in
charge of Miss E. C. Allmendinger. Admission to these rooms and work done in them
will be under her direction.”

Miss Allmendinger’s frequent collaborator in botany, Mary H. Clark
(1813—1875),?73 came to Michigan from New York in the fall of 1837 when her
father, an Episcopal clergyman, moved to Brighton. In 1839—before the University was
admitting students—she founded in Ann Arbor, with her sister Chloe as vice-principal,
The Misses Clark’s School (earlier called the Misses Clark’s Young Ladies’ Seminary),
which she served as principal or headmistress. This was a pioneer institution, conducted
until Miss Clark’s death, and was no doubt inspired by Emma Willard’s Troy Female
Seminary, which she reportedly attended after seven years of teaching and before
moving to Michigan.274 Mrs. Willard—who learned all she could from Amos Eaton—did
endorse The Misses Clark’s School, an 1842 prospectus of which includes in the list of
books used Eaton and Wright’s Manual and “Mrs. Lincoln’s Botany.”275 Miss Clark
was described as “a small nail-biting, nervous creature with a face one would long
remember”*7® and the “special intellectual interest of this lady was in the study of
botany.”277 Miss Clark had come to Michigan the year that Elizabeth Allmendinger

270Bartlett manuscript, p. 320 (see note 268).

2710n Elizabeth Catherine Allmendinger, see Beakes (1906, p. 219); there is an obituary on p. 1
of the Ann Arbor Daily News for March 22, 1909. At the time of her death, she was the oldest
resident of Ann Arbor who had been born in the city.

272Rartlett manuscript, p. 297 (see note 268).

273For information on Miss Clark and her school, see Stephenson (1928) and files in the Michigan
Historical Collections, University of Michigan. A long obituary is on p. 3 of the Michigan Argus
(Ann Arbor) for July 16, 1875.

274 Mary H. Clark is not listed among former pupils in Emma Willard and Her Pupils or Fifty
Years of Troy Female Seminary 1822—1872, published by Mrs. Russell Sage (New York, 1898. 895
pp.). Perhaps the compilers of this volume had no address for Miss Clark and thus were unable to
solicit information for it. Or perhaps her biographers are all wrong in saying that she attended the
school.

275 Almira Hart Lincoln (later Phelps), author of best-selling (but hardly non-technical) botany
books, was the younger sister of Emma Hart Willard and was vice-principal of the Troy Female
Seminary 1824—1831 (see p. 25 of history cited in previous note).

276Stephenson (1928, p. 202). Compare the statement in a letter from Isaac Martindale to Miss
Allmendinger, December 11, 1873: “Please rememb e to Miss. Clark, whose visit here last
summer I shall not soon forget. . .” (Allmendinger papers, University of Michigan Herbarium).
277Stephenson (1928, p. 204).

69

was born; she knew Abram Sager and John Wright and almost certainly Douglass
Houghton—all of whom had studied in Troy, and it was she who fostered the first
botanical interests of Miss Allmendinger, who probably once was a pupil in her school.
Miss Clark carried on an extensive botanical correspondence and exchange, as well as
traveling some herself,278 and Miss Allmendinger did likewise. Unfortunately, Miss
Clark used a style of label all too common in her day, with “Ann Arbor, Michigan”
printed as her address at the bottom. Specimens accompanied by these labels were not
necessarily from Ann Arbor; but even when other localities were explicitly given on
such labels, the specimens are often cited in monographs as being from the collector’s
address.

Ex. Conn. Mary H. CLARK
CLARK, Label written by Mary H.

The IS ae Clark, for a specimen [tie
: Negaunee, L[ake] S[uperior],

1871 [Marquette Co., Michi-

TS hs i gan]. Data written in this dis-
ae hand may presumably

SIE > be relied but Miss

relied upon,

: see Clark’s specimens are too ria

a ten attributed to “An

ee bor,” printed as her age
on the label.

ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN.

Charles K. Dodge (1844—1918)279 was a collector who was particularly obsessed
with citing his home town almost every time he used his name. I have seen labels on
which he did it three times, but usually it was printed neatly twice: “Herbarium of
Chas. K. Dodge, Port Huron, Michigan” and “Collected by C. K. Dodge, Port Huron,
Michigan.” The specimen itself may not have come from anywhere in Michigan at
all—nor from the home of the specialist who determined it for Dodge and whose
address was generally also written on the label! Many odd and questionable distribu-
tion records in the literature are doubtless the result of such old labels, hastily misread
or incompletely copied or misunderstood in the process of exchanges.

Dodge, born in Jackson County, Michigan, barely qualifies for inclusion in this
19th century story, for much of his collecting was done in the early years of the
present century, in diverse parts of Michigan. But his “Flora of St. Clair County,
Michigan, and the Western Part of Lambton County, Ontario” was completed in 1898,
dedicated to the Port Huron Academy of Science—evidently another short-lived
organization, and published in 1900. Dodge’s flora is a thoroughly annotated 82-page
listing in fine print of over 1100 species. It was another production of a local flora by
an accomplished amateur, for Dodge was a lawyer (who, we are told by Billington, did
not relish the nickname “‘Posy’’). After graduating from the University of Michigan in
1870, where he had a course in botany under Alexander Winchell, he taught in the
Upper Peninsula. He took an interest in botany about 1875, the year that he was
admitted to the bar and moved to Port Huron to practice law. Except for two years

278Henry Gillman wrote to Miss Clark April 11, 1867: “I think, ae beg = = you would
enjoy a tour on the Upper Lakes. It is a noble field. Perhaps you away some time.’
(Letter in Allmendinger papers, University of Michigan Herbarium.) ey ier did eee at Lake
Superior in the early 1870’s—perhaps as a result of Gillman’s encouragement.

279On Charles Keene Dodge, see Jenks (1912, pp. 822—824); Mackenzie (1918); Billington (1921).

Mary H, Clark (1813—1875). Emma J. Cole (1845-1910).
(From Stephenson 1927, p. 114.)

Charles K. Dodge (1844-1918). Oliver A. Farwell (1867—1944).
(1917 photo)

71

(May 1889—May 1891) in the West, he remained for the rest of his life in Port Huron,
where he served at various times in civic positions, including city attorney. In
September of 1893 Dodge was appointed one of the deputy collectors of customs at
Port Huron; he largely retired from the practice of law and had more time to devote
to botany. He became dissatisfied with his herbarium about the same time and nearly
started it all over. In 1895 alone, he collected, single-handed, over 6000 specimens
(including duplicates used for exchange), preferring to travel by bicycle rather than
horse and buggy.280 Like most of his contemporaries, he exchanged widely. His own
herbarium of some 35,000 specimens was left to the University of Michigan at his
death, but unfortunately many of the records included in his published lists (especially
the later ones) are not supported by specimens.

Another prominent collector much of whose activity in Michigan was in the early
20th century was Charles A. Davis (1861—1916).28! After graduating from Bowdoin
College, in Maine, in 1886 and teaching for a year in Chicago, he came in 1887 to
Alma College, Michigan, to teach natural science and chemistry. (The college had just
been founded in 1886.) He immediately began collecting specimens about Alma and
annotating a copy of Wheeler and Smith’s “Michigan Flora’”—new in 1881. 82 When
the geological survey of Michigan resumed activity, Davis was employed summers as a
field agent, beginning in 1896, and was able to collect plants particularly in Tuscola
and Huron counties. Volney M. Spalding then asked him to organize a new program in
forestry at the University of Michigan, authorized by the regents in 1901. In 1905
Davis received his Ph.D. from the University, with a classic thesis on peat, and in the
same year he left his position as instructor in forestry to become curator of the
herbarium, from which post he resigned in 1908 to move to Washington, having
become peat expert for the U.S. Geological Survey.

Space will not permit even mentioning all the resident collectors becoming active
in Michigan toward the end of the 19th century. Only one more should be cited
briefly in this chapter, one who has already been the subject of a major treatise. Oliver
A. Farwell (1867—1944)283 collected very extensively in his home territory on the
Keweenaw Peninsula during the last two decades of the previous century. His father
was manager of one of the leading copper mines, the Cliff. After moving to Detroit in
1892, where he became botanist for Parke, Davis & Company, Farwell explored
southeastern Michigan vigorously, but this was mostly in the 20th century, as were
many of his vacation trips and post-retirement years back in the Copper Country.
Farwell left us the impression of not having been very well organized, and his early
collections, especially, are sometimes suspect as to accuracy of dates or localities.
Nevertheless, he had a keen eye for oddities and he published names for a large
number of minor variants. His large personal herbarium was left to the Cranbrook
Institute of Science, where it is now well organized and indexed. An additional set of
Farwell’s specimens from the Parke, Davis herbarium came with that collection to the
University of Michigan in 1933.

280Dodge (1896).

2810n Charles Albert Davis, see Lane (1917); Dana (1953, pp. 9-23); Jones (1977, pp. 279-282).
282Davis’ copiously annotated copies of the three Michigan floras (Wheeler & Smith 1881, Beal &
Wheeler 1892, Beal 1905) are at the University of Michigan Herbarium and are often useful in
supplementing ria on his labels. Collections from “about Alma,” for instance, were sometimes
from an adjacent county.

2830n Oliver Atkins Farwell, see McVaugh, Cain, & Hagenah (1953); Bartlett (1954); Wells &
Thompson (1973)

72

With so many active naturalists in Michigan, it is surprising that a state
society—spoken of from time to time—should have been so long being organized. The
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters was founded in 1870 and the
Minnesota Academy three years later, but not until the 1890’s were serious steps taken
toward a similar society in Michigan.784 Finally, a meeting was called for June 27,

On the founding of the Michigan Academy, see pp. 5—12 of its First Report (for beat 1899),
published in 1900. The name was expanded in 1921 to include “Science, Arts, and Le

MICHIGAN FLORA. 83
CHAM XZ LIRIUM
Devil’s Bit. 1190. ne via (7)
TOFIELDIA
sin Asphe-. 2101. nereeets, Hudson, vr.
, yale,—Dr. A. B. Lyons,
False Aspho- 1192. latinos, re i,
del. nous swamps. Frequent.
UVULARIA ot 4
$V" Large-flow- andiflora, Smith. CO. & 8S. fe. ne
er'd Bellwort. 1193¢gr 8 & 8 Wr ted VEE
Rich woods Common.
monly Bell. 1194. perfoliata, L. :
: woods, Marquette Co.—Burt MS, Cat.; Flint; Macomb Co.
Infrequent.
OAKES
y Sessile-leayed 1195. sesilflia Th, :
ag on Lo arently infrequent 8. Ann Arbor—Allmend, Cat;
Tpellants re 3 i Hint; Macomb ©o.; Crystal ee Montcalm Co, ()ja and
northward to Marquette Co.,—Whitney Ca
STREPTOPU
Y Twisted. 1196. aie DC.
; Fort Gratiot.—W —_ Cat.; Houghton Lake (!); to L. Superior where it is
- rare —Whitney , pr
pL Buistet- 119%. roseus, Michs. Vee h May”
Be ‘ummond’ s Is. and Sugar Is.—Winch, Cat.; to L. Superior where it is (Z
yery common— Whitney Cat,
CLINTONIA A r)
ohbAeClintonia, 1198. borealis, — Th KA
Follows the Lake Michigan shore down as far as 8. Haven; on the eastern % q j
pa of the State reaches to Macomb Co,—Dr, Bn Cooley; andinthecen. +" Yoo
rof the State is found in IoniaCo. (1), Very commonnorth of latitude os t t ame
is hone
: SMILAC ra
‘alse Solo- ¢ GK ney)
S ee tele ene am Deaf... (***) Th. (2 Thy
False Spike- Moist grounds. Common.
mane. Big 4’
1200. stellata, — Th. ——
‘i Moist bank Common.
ie 1201. triton, Dest. Th, Lemna, oct

Frequent, ~~

a MAIANTHEMUM te
ee 1202#bifolia, DC. Th. Ww

Woods, every where.
POLYGONATUM
$y ea ~ 1208: bein Ell. (***) Th. Ql——w,
r.—Winch. Cat.; Ionia Co.(! 1 tl i, Open woods. po Te
Comm a pe
$ “ Greats. s. 1204. giganteum, Dietrich. (***) Th. arr We
tiver banks, Stems often very tall and channeled on one side, Inter- ¢*~ } |
mediate forms between this and the preceding, occur. FO eee
ASPAR
b Asparagus. 1205. “afcinai L.

aringly escaped from gardens in older parts of the State,
A page (slightly reduced) from C. A. Davis’ annotated copy of igre’ and Smith’s ‘Michigan
Flora” of 1881. Collecting ae of Alpena, Alma, Port Crescent, St. Lou s, Lansing, and Medicine
[Madison?] Lake are noted in the margins. (For the work of Wheeler & Smith, see p. 86.)

73

1894, at the University of Michigan and 25 persons assembled. William J. Beal (whom
we shall soon mention again) was elected president of the temporary organization and
among the other botanists who signed a membership list were Charles A. Davis, Oliver

Farwell, Frederick C. Newcombe, A. J. Pieters,285 J. H. Schaffner, and Charles F.
Wheeler. It was recommended that the name “Michigan Academy of Science” be
adopted. Organization was completed in December, 1894, and sections—including a
botanical one—were established. Beal stressed the importance of a state survey of the
fauna, flora, and other natural resources: “‘Michigan is far behind many other states
east, west, and south in the study of fauna and flora. Primitive conditions are fast
disappearing. In hundreds of townships, there are only fragments here and there which
still contain the native wild plants.... Local societies for investigating this subject
should be encouraged and assisted.” 286

The local societies, however, which had thrived in the last half of the 19th century
for the most part only continued to decline, even as the new state academy was
ascending. Some merged with others, some quietly died, some few grew into viable
institutions. But all had been significant cultural influences in their communities.
Collections, whether in the hands of local institutions or individuals, often received
inadequate attention—especially botanical collections which are not adapted for public
display purposes and which therefore there is less incentive to maintain. It is fortunate
that so many of the large and historic plant collections built up by our botanical
forbears have ultimately reached the major institutional herbaria in this region, where
they can be properly cared for and readily consulted by those interested in local
records and history. Most botanists have, of course, always distributed duplicates
widely, exchanging with other collectors and submitting specimens to specialists for
identification. However, as the 19th century progressed, the day soon passed when the
botanical wealth of the Great Lakes of necessity ended up in New York, because John
Torrey checked it; or at Harvard, because Asa Gray must see it; or in Philadelphia,
where the Academy of Natural Sciences was founded in 1812, only two years after
Thomas Nuttall’s pioneering trip through the Lakes. With a great burgeoning of
scientific information from our region came also the natural development of regional
institutions and publications. Each new find did not have to be reported in Silliman’s
American Journal of Science, founded in 1818. One national journal, still thriving, the
Botanical Gazette, was founded in 1875 primarily to be a journal of botany of the
Midwest and West.287

285Pieters’ report on the plants of Lake St. Clair, published in 1894 and based on field work in
1893 sponsored by the Michigan Fish Commission, was probably the first significant paper dealing
strictly with the aquatic plants (vascular plants as well as algae) of any portion of the upper Great

286Rep. Mich. Acad. 1 (for 1894—1899): 13 (1900).
287See Rodgers (1944a, p. 33 et passim).

Chapter 8.
VISITORS FROM FAR AND NEAR

Never, of course, was there a time when ail botanical exploration around the Great
Lakes was done by “official” expeditions or by local botanists, whether amateur or
professional. The list of those who passed through one or more times and gathered
specimens or recorded observations would be a long list indeed. Cruises on the Great
Lakes became popular by the 1860’s and 1870's; the first lock at Sault Ste. Marie had
opened in 1855, making Lake Superior readily accessible. Guidebooks for tourists and
travelers were published, as mining, fishing, lumbering, and other communities were
able to offer facilities and the reputation of the Lakes region grew for healthful fresh
air and invigorating climate. Construction of lighthouses and preparation of naviga-
tional charts greatly improved the safety of shipping.

Botanists were among those who took advantage of opportunities to visit the
Lakes. From the New York city region, for instance, Arthur Hollick (1857—1933)
visited the Copper Country of Lake Superior in August of 1879—the year that both he

d N. L. Britton (1859-1934) graduated from the Columbia School of Mines.
Hollick’s later career was in paleobotany, but he published a short list of vascular
plants observed on his 1879 cruise to Houghton. Britton himself (of “Britton and
Brown” and other fame) visited Lake Superior a few years later and also collected at
Mackinac Island. Thomas Morong (1827—1894), clergyman and outstanding student of
the pondweeds, vacationed in Michigan in 1882 and wrote afterwards: “Yes, I visited
Michigan, as proposed, and had a ‘splendid’ time, as the school girls say. Spent the
whole month of August in Northern Michigan, and had a really fine sail in a steamer
from Sault Ste. Marie to Buffalo, on my way home. Collected plants at Manistee,
Mackinac, & Sault Ste. Marie.”288 From Pennsylvania, T. C. Porter visited the Lake
Superior region by steamship in 1865.789 To give an idea of the diversity of
individuals and of circumstances through which their lives touched this region, a few
persons of special interest who do not fit neatly into the narrative thus far are cited
rather briefly in this chapter. Most of them achieved greater recognition in another
region.

David Douglas (1799—1834)290 deserves mention, if only to avert confusion with
David Bates Douglass, who collected in Michigan Territory three years before David
Douglas, whose principal fame was achieved later in the Pacific Northwest. (Who has
not heard of such plants as the Douglas fir?) In 1823, Douglas, who was head gardener
at the botanic gardens in Glasgow, was engaged by the Horticultural Society of

288 Letter from Morong to Harry N. Patterson, Oct. 6, 1882, as quoted by Kibbe (1953, p. 431).
289 See chapter 6, at notes 229—230.

2900n David Douglas, see Harvey (1947); Beidelman (1969); and Douglas’ Journal, published in
1914. Ewan (1950, p. 197) gives a thumbnail sketch, with references, and a long list of references
is given by Stafleu & Cowan, Taxonomic Literature ed. 2, vol. 1 (Reg. Veg. 94. 1976), pp.
674-675.

74

75

London (now the Royal Horticultural Society) to explore in America for new plants to
grow, particularly trees. He sailed from Liverpool in early June, arrived at New York
two months later, and in mid-September was at his farthest destination—Amherstburg,
Upper Canada [Ontario]. September 15—25 he botanized along the full length of the
Detroit River, including on September 23 “‘an excursion across the river to Michigan
Territory” where he “found several species of Liatris” and other plants. He was
especially interested in the oaks of the region. Of the white oak (Quercus alba), he
recorded: “On the banks of the River Detroit from Amherstburg to the junction of the
Thames with the St. Clair in Upper Canada, and on the opposite banks, in the
Michigan Territory, on a deep alluvial rich black soil, these trees frequently measure
from 20 to 25 feet in circumference at 8 feet from the ground, and are from 80 to
100 feet high.”29! On a “small island” [Bois Blanc] opposite Amherstburg he
gathered Lonicera hirsuta, a honeysuckle which created excitement in England. While
Douglas is credited with introducing many North American plants into horticulture,
they were mostly from the Northwest and not from the Detroit-Windsor area!

George Engelmann (1809—1884),292 well known physician and botanist in St.
Louis, Missouri, collected at the Manitou Islands in Lake Michigan in 1840.293 He had
come to the United States in 1832 upon completing his studies in Europe (where he
began a friendship with Louis Agassiz), and in 1835 settled in St. Louis. In 1840 he
returned to Germany, where he was married on June 11; on his return, he visited Asa
Gray in New York, beginning a lifelong friendship and correspondence.294 Engelmann
evidently took his bride back to St. Louis via the Great Lakes—perhaps following a
route from New York to Detroit similar to the one taken by Gray himself only two
years earlier when he visited the officers of the new University of Michigan. A
steamboat from Detroit to Chicago would almost certainly have stopped at South
Manitou Island for “all the steamboats sailing on the upper lakes visit this place for
supply of fuel, or for shelter in storms, (for the latter purpose used by all other
vessels,)...”295 Like most botanists, Engelmann was undoubtedly an opportunist on
such an occasion, and I suspect he gathered what specimens he could whenever
firewood was being loaded. After returning to St. Louis, he wrote Gray in November

291 Journal, p. 32.

mong numerous references on Engelmann, see A. Gray (1884); Sander (1886); White
nee oat ee pp. 157—162); Boisliniére in Kelly & Burrage (1920, pp. 365—366); Ewan

(1950, pp. —205). None of these mention his being on Lake Michigan, although some refer
vaguely to a Superior. Sander (p. 7) states that it was during the last years of his life that
Engelmann’s explorations included ‘‘Lake Superior and the northern country.” This was presumably

in 1878, for on October 7 of that year Engelmann presented specimens of copper from the Lake

[Proceedings] . 1880). I have encountered no specimens of Engelmann’ s from Lake Superior.

293 Specimens in the herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden; labels bear only the year or at
most “‘Aug 1840” for a date.

294Dupree (1959, p. 97).

29SLt. James T. Homans (in charge of the new lighthouse district embracing Lakes Michigan and
Huron) to the Secretary of the Treasury, Nov. 5, 1838, reporting on his selection of the site for
the light on South Manitou, authorized by Congress July 7, 1838 (25th Congress, 3rd Sess., U.S.

(See also Myron H. Vent, South Manitou Island, 1973, pp. 15 & 46.) Although only woodcutters
We fuel for steamboats inhabited the Manitous in the early 1840's, farming was later attempted. By

1898, the noted mali of Chicago ecologist, H. C. Cowles, was taking a class to North Manitou
(Rodgers 19442, p.

76

of the plants he had observed at Niagara and “others equally interesting | found on the
banks of Lake Huron and on the islands of Lake Michigan.”’296

The influence (more or less indirect, to be sure) of Upper Peninsula copper on
Michigan botany would be a story in itself. Long known to the Indians, copper
deposits were first “officially” reported from the region by Douglass Houghton, who,
as we have noted, collected plants in the course of his geological explorations. After
the Chippewas ceded the land west of Marquette to the government in 1843, the
burgeoning mining industry began in the Copper Country on Lake Superior. Following
Houghton’s death in 1845 and the appointment in 1847 of C. T. Jackson, of Boston,
to take charge of a Federal survey of the mineral resources of Michigan’s new public
lands, Boston connections with copper mining were important. O. A. Farwell’s father
was sent from Boston in 1871 to manage the fabulous Cliff mine. Farwell’s prodigious
botanical labors in the Copper Country have already been alluded to; it can be added
here that his position as botanist for Parke, Davis & Company in Detroit resulted from
family friendships with the founder of that firm, Hervey C. Parke, who had attended
to the business records of the Cliff mine 1852—1863.297 Even before the senior
Farwell attempted to restore the Cliff to productivity, Boston money had been heavily
invested in other copper mines,298 for the influence of Charles T. Jackson was
considerable. A prominent Bostonian, Jackson29? was the first curator of minerals and
geology for the Boston Society of Natural History (1838—1841) and was the Society’s
vice president 1843—1874.300 J. W. Foster (1815—1873)30! returned to Massa-
chusetts in 1844 after practicing law in Ohio and assisting on the Ohio Geological
Survey. In 1845 he was sent to Lake Superior in the interests of several mining
companies. Two years later he was appointed to assist Jackson, along with J. D.
Whitney, and in 1849 completion of the Federal survey was assigned to Foster and
Whitney upon Jackson’s resignation. (It is not surprising that Louis Agassiz, a leading
spirit in the Boston Society of Natural History, conferred with Jackson and Foster in
Sault Ste. Marie before setting forth on his 1848 expedition upon Lake Superior.)

296Letter of George Engelmann, Nov. 26, 1840, in the Gray correspondence at the Gray Herbarium
(as reported to me by E. A. hae

297Wells & Thompson (197 70); see also Donald Chaput, The Cliff: America’s First Great
Copper Mine (Sequoia Press, hates 1971), pp. 89-91, 100-102.

298See Abbott (1971, especially pp. 232—236) and the major previous accounts cited therein. It
should be noted in passing that Louis Agassiz’s son Alexander spent two years in the 1860's

Hecla Mining Company in 1871, with Alexander Agassiz, Rodolphe L. Agassiz (his brother), and
Quincy A. Shaw (a son-in-law of Louis Agassiz) in control. For forty years or more the
esl family had absolute control of Calumet and Hecla, which was the most profitable

arth until the 1920’s, paying shareholders more in dividends than all the gold and silver
bon of California, Nevada, or Alaska—and enabling Alexander Agassiz to devote himself to
cendae studies and support of his father’s Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Could
Douglass Houghton and William A. Burt ever have dreamed of what their reports of copper and
iron would ultimately mean to the economy of this region—and, indirectly, to study of its natural
history?

2990n Charles Thomas Jackson (M. D. Harvard aie = Apel Cycl. Am. Biogr. 3: 384—385
(1887); Kelly & Burrage (1920, pp. 597—598); Mer in ~ Am. Biogr. 9: 536—538
(1932). Controversies over his discovery of ether aa as a i ventin ing the telegraph are
interesting but hardly relevant to the present reins (see eek "1905, 2: 604 et sqq.). See
the end of chapter 2 for Jackson’s surveys in Mic

300Bouvé (1880).

3010n John Wells Foster (who was president of the A.A.A.S. in 1869), see Applet. Cycl. Am.
Biogr. 2: 512 (1887).

yi |

Massachusetts physicians ministered from time to time to the copper-mining
communities and some of these were natural history collectors as well. It is reported in
the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History that at a meeting November
18, 1857, Charles J. Sprague (curator of botany for the Society 1852—1865) “‘read the
names of a small collection of cryptogamous plants brought by Dr. Samuel Kneeland,
Jr., from the Lake Superior region,”292 and 11 widespread species (fungi and lichens
except for one moss, Neckera pennata) are listed. Nothing is indicated of the locality
or circumstances, but this is one of the first lists of such plants from Lake
Superior—and perhaps the first recorded collection of a moss from Michigan. Samuel
Kneeland, Jr. (1821—1888),393 a native of Boston, demonstrated anatomy at Harvard
Medical School 1851—1853 and served as secretary of the Boston Society of Natural
History 1858—1862 (having also served as cabinet-keeper and curator of fishes). “In
1856 he went to Portage Lake, the copper district of Lake Superior, as physician and
surgeon to several copper mining companies, where he remained one year.”304
month after his return to Boston, he presented a paper on the birds se epecian
Point in which he refers to “‘a residence of nearly a year at Portage Lake, from August,
1856, to June, 1857.”395 The cryptogams earlier reported, however, cannot be
assumed all to be from Houghton County for—typical of much geographic vagueness in
those days—Dr. Kneeland explained: “In Keweenaw Point, I include that portion of
the Upper Peninsula of Michigan which extends up into Lake Superior, embracing not
only the Point proper, but the western portion as far as Ontonagon, the region of
Portage Lake and Entry, and the Anse of Keweenaw Bay —all of which localities I have
visited.” 30

Another New England physician, better known as a botanist than the zoologist Dr.
Kneeland, was James W. Robbins (1801—1879).39© A pondweed and an aquatic sedge,
Potamogeton robbinsii and Eleocharis robbinsii, are among the plants which bear his
name. He practiced in Uxbridge, Massachusetts for 30 years, until 1859, when he came
to the Houghton-Hancock area as physician to the Pewabic copper mines, and he
added extensively to his herbarium during the four years he was in Michigan. In
1863—1864 he collected on a tour down the Mississippi to Texas and Cuba, after
which he returned to Uxbridge “where he spent the remainder of his life, mostly
retired from medical practice and devoting his leisure to his favorite pursuit.’ 397
Labels of some of Robbins’ specimens, which are widely distributed in herbaria, bear
definite localities, but the numerous ones attributed to Keweenaw Point are not
necessarily from the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula (where the Point is designated on
modern maps), as is clear from Kneeland’s statement quoted above. Those labeled from
Keweenaw Peninsula are more obviously uncertain as to county.

302Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 6: 296 (1859).

3030n Samuel Kneeland, Jr. (A.M. Harvard 1840; M.D. Harvard 1843), see a aad Runkle
(1889); Harrington (1905, 3: 1474); Kelly & Burrage (1920, p. 669); Dict. Am. Bio, : 459
(1933). (Harrington must be in error in giving Kneeland’s birth, year as 1820, for ‘all ‘ieee sources
cite 1821.

304Runkle (1889, p. 439).

305Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 6: 231 (1859).

306On James Watson Robbins (B.A. Yale 1822; M.D. Yale 1828), see Obit. Records Grad. Yale
Coll. 1879, pp. 335—336; Kelly & Burrage (1920, p. 984). See also Rhodora 3: 262 (1901

307 Yale Obit. Records—which also state: “During his professional life he had devoted himself
largely to botany, gathering a valuable library, second, it is believed, to no private botanical library
in the country.

78

Early botanical collectors were often trained as physicians—indeed, medicine was
about the only field in which an advanced degree in science could be readily obtained,
and botany was an important supporting field. Some medically trained scientists
apparently undertook a regular practice only briefly or not at all (e.g., Asa Gray, C. T.
Jackson, A. E. Foote); some collected plants when their time or travels allowed;398
only a few, such as George Engelmann, conducted their affairs with such extraordinary
efficiency that they could achieve distinction in both botany and medicine. But
physicians were not the only group of professional persons with auxiliary interests in
natural history. Clergymen were frequently noted as naturalists and, like physicians,
were often located at several places during their careers. (Like non-practicing physi-
cians, too, some theologically trained persons never held pastorates, or held them only
briefly.)

Among the itinerant clergymen we have already mentioned T. A. Bruhin’s work in
Wisconsin. Another European priest of early days was Lawrence Holzer
(1819—1876),399 who was born in Bavaria, came to the United States as a missionary
in 1847, and traveled extensively. An enthusiastic botanist, he sent quantities of
specimens to Europe and built up a large herbarium of his own. His chief service was
in Rochester, New York, but for a while he was at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church
in Detroit, where he evidently was acquainted with other local amateurs and whence
he wrote to Mary H. Clark in 1867:

e Mr Gilman [sic] & Mr Foote will bring a few collection [sic] of Carices etc.
or f St Louis

looking for it I discovered near Detroit Juncus Greenii [sic] & Vaseyi growing in close
neighbourhood.

Wishing you a happy success in your botanical labors & also some of our
professors aa students at Ann Arbor would take more interest in botany . , 3/0

Apparently Holzer felt that the University was displaying insufficient interest in
botany, but his own contributions were duly acknowledged by Alexander Winchell,
who was responsible for all museum collections:

Rey. L. Holzer of St. Mary’s Church, Detroit, has presented to the University 27
a of plants growing in Michigan, ie not ate ore existing in our Collection, nor
mbraced in any catalogue of the plants of the State. Mr. Holzer has also furnished a
elas of 600 species on 7 plants on ecaines in the Southeastern portion of the
State—mostly about Detroi

308Nathan Wright Folwell (1805—1879), for example, was a medical classmate of Asa Gray and
evidently practiced in Monroe County, Michigan, in 1832, where he collected plants; the rest of his
professional career was in New York state. Dr. Folwell appears to have been Gray’s first botanical
correspondent (Stuckey 1978b).

3090n Lawrence Holzer, see Beckwith (1912, pp. 42—43).

310Letter of June 6, 1867, in year papers, Sales of Michigan ania sonia A specimen
of J. vaseyi seagate by Holzer Aug. 12, 1866, is in the University Herbarium, from “wet woods,
swamps Detroit” and with the notation on the original label: “I have aE that is a form
between sah & Greenii.” J. M. Bigelow collected J. vaseyi and J. greenei together in June, July,
and August of 1867 in “Wet woods near Detroit” (Engelm. Herb. Junc. Bor.-Am. Norm., Nos. 17
& 19). [An apparent original label with a sheet of No. 17 in herbarium of the Missouri Botanical
Garden reads more explicitly “2 miles south Grand Junction Aug 27th ? 1866.”] I wonder if
Holzer called these plants to Bigelow’s attention, or vice versa. (Cf. also note 222.)

311statement of Operations in the Museum... for the Year Ending 20th September, 1866, p. 7
(Regents Proc., p. 174). Winchell’s report for the following year noted: “Rev. L. Holzer, of Detroit,
has furnished a supplementary list of 54 species found within the State, but not heretofore

Fo,

D. R. Shoop (1833—?)3!2. was born in Pennsylvania, later lived in Illinois, and
prepared for college partly at the University High School in Ann Arbor and partly by
private instruction and study. He entered the senior class at the University of Michigan
in 1863 and graduated with an A.B. degree in 1864. In the fall of 1864 he entered
Auburn Theological Seminary (Auburn, N.Y.) and upon completion of his work there
he received an A.M. degree from the University of Michigan in June of 1867. He was
also married (to Anna E. Stanfield) in June of 1867 in Ann Arbor, where he had
united with the First Congregational Church in 1857. Apparently he was connected in
some way with Ann Arbor for about a decade and he was doubtless acquainted then
with Miss Elizabeth Allmendinger, whom he addressed in his later letters as ‘“‘Dear
Friend Libbie,” and who was also associated with the Congregational Church. Shoop
was ordained in Tennessee in the fall of 1867 and during the 1867—68 year he was on
the faculty of Maryville College, Maryville, Tennessee. From 1868 to 1873 he was in
Bellevue (Eaton Co.), Michigan, presumably at least part-time in the ministry; for the
next two years he was superintendent of schools in Eaton County.3!3 He then served
pastorates elsewhere in Michigan: Manchester, Washtenaw County (1876); St. Louis,
Gratiot County (Congregational Church, 1877-1878); Hastings, Barry County
(Presbyterian Church, 1879-1880); back in Bellevue (1880—1882); and South Haven,
Van Buren County (1882).3!4 His seminary last heard of him at Flushing, Genesee
County, noting that in 1885 he was a member of the Saginaw Presbytery.2!5 His
family also lost all track of him in the 1880’s, when he left Michigan for the West.
Whether he continued in the ministry or collected plants is unknown.

However, Shoop was an active collector in his earlier years and exchanged
specimens with others. On January 23, 1867, he wrote to Miss Allmendinger from

included in any catalogue of the plants of the State.” Holzer’s lists are not to be found in the files
of the University of Michigan Herbarium, and neither they nor any letters from Holzer have been
found in the Winchell papers in the Michigan Historical Collections.

312Information about Darius Royer Shoop comes from Chase (1880), a file in the Alumni Records
Office of the University of Michigan, and letters (1867—1878) to Miss E. C. Allmendinger, in the
University of Michigan Herbarium. See also note in Mich. Bot. 11: 35 (1972), written while I was
misinformed that Shoop was not an alumnus of the University.

313]t was in Eaton Co. t Shoop found Plantago cordata (cited Mich. Bot. 8: 101. 1969), oe
considered an eae ee in Michigan (Mich. Bot. 16: 108. 1977). On July 23, 1869,

looked for for years be of which I found a few plants among the Mts of Tenn. but not in blossom
grows here in abundance. The rare Plantago cordata a water or marsh plant ie grows here .

auatt is difficult to reconcile the record in what appears to be a clipping from a printed catalog of
om

but that church was without a minister, while the Pennfield es cere (of 23 members) had
“preaching a part of the time”; the 1875 situation was similar. By 1876 “Bellevue is practically
extinct... Pennfield has nothing very encouraging” an both churches soon expired. It would

appear that Shoop continued to live in Bellevue while serving, at least during part of his residence,
the struggling church at Pennfield and perhaps teaching in addition. The clerical details are
unessential for scientific purposes, but the sites of his residence and activity may is to clarify
labels with specimens. Later, at least, he evidently ministered to Presbyterian churches

315Note from Auburn a ievlewen Seminary, Aug. 11, 1900, in Shoop file, Alumni Records Office,
University of Michigan. It is interesting that there was once a “Society of Natural History of
Auburn Theological Seminary” (see Meisel 1929, 3: 439).

80

seminary: ‘““My Herbarium is scattered ... part of it in Mich & a part here & much of
it not yet arranged... As soon as I can arrange my herbarium I would like to
exchange & it makes but little difference where we are if we but know each others
postoffice address.”’3!© Since his specimens are scantily labeled (and his penmanship
poor), as full an account of his life as now seems possible has been presented here.
One of his closer friends and correspondents was Isaac H. Hall, who cited collections
and observations from Shoop in short notes published 1870—1871.3!7

J. W. Stacey (1871—1943)318 is another whose Michigan days—barely in the 19th
century—are not well documented. His fame as a student of Carex in the western
United States came during the last decade of his life. But he was born in Kalamazoo
County, Michigan, and attended the literary department of the University of Michigan
in 1896-97. In November of 1897 he was ordained in the Congregational ministry,
and from 1897 to 1901 he was pastor of the Congregational Church in New Baltimore,
Michigan, on Lake St. Clair at the Macomb-St. Clair county line 319 Stacey’s botanical
interests evidently began no later than 1891 in the vicinity of Rochester (Oakland Co.,
Michigan). On December 11, 1894, he wrote to W. J. Beal in East Lansing, enclosing a
“List of Phaenogams & Higher Cryptogams found growing within 15 miles of
Rochester, Mich., by J. W. Stacey.” It contained 982 species and the covering letter
(from one who was to specialize in Carex some 40 years later!) noted: “This list is
incomplete, especially in the Cyperaceae, but I did not want to put down any species
unless I was sure of it. They have all been found since 1891, and I think another year
I could add considerable...” Stacey offered to send Beal the exact localities for any
species and asked for publications on botany. In October of 1900, he wrote to C. F.
Wheeler, commenting on a Panicum identification and enclosing a list of 1116 names

3160n March 10, 1869, he wrote Miss Allmendinger from Bellevue, which he considered “a
splendid field. We have a variety, beech & maple woods, oak openings, creek flats, & marshes. The
country has the botanical advantage of being somewhat new also.” And he urged her: ‘Please
come out & stay with us all summer & botanize this region.... Take the railroad to Marshall &
there is a stage running from Marshall here distance 13 miles.” an Allmendinger was in ipied
ee in 1869, but tent visited Mr. and Mrs. Shoop and their child in September of that

317 Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 1: 35-36; 43-44 (1870); 2: 18 (1871). Isaac Holiistes ‘al
(1837-1896) was at the time a practicing attorney in New York city and active in church

Moines to observe the solar eclipse with an expedition from Hamilton College (of which he was an
1859 ~~ but he apparently did not stop (see Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 1: 27 (1870); letter of
Dec. 2, 1869, to E. C. endinger, in Univ. Mich. Herbarium). Hall also corresponded with Miss
Allmendinger pilieet aid he sought in keeping up with the address of the peripatetic Rev. Mr.
Shoop!) and eenees showed some of her troublesome specimens to John Torrey, for
identification. A f ears later, Hall was eda in another field and he became a noted oriental
and Biblical aie yb Applet. Cycl. Am. Biogr. 3: 39. 1887).

318,11 drogen Les ie biographical information on John William Stacey in botanical literature
seems to be included in Howell (1944). It has not been possible to learn anything of Stacey’s
academic ait in either theology or oe apart from the single year which he had at the
University of Michigan. (See also next n

319Dates of Stacey’s ministry are in e all shed Minutes, Mich. Congr. Assoc., Annual Meetings
1898 through 1905. In 1901 he was called 7 Perri (Ionia Co.); the 1904 and 1905 Minutes
give his residence as Grand Rapids (Ken 0.) in the list of ministers associated with the
Congregational Church, but he is not listed as wee minister of any of the churches in the Grand
Rapids Association and one must assume that he may have been pe sort of assistant minister or
executive there. What he did from 1906 until his move to California in 19 is unknown.
Presumably this is when he had the medical training indicated by Howell (1944, p. 183)—but not
t the University of Michigan, despite Howell’s implication; Howell says that Stacey interned at
Bellevue Hospital, but he is not listed among the internes at the Bellevue Hospitals in the reports of
1908—1913 (the only ones available to me)

81

of plants growing in Oakland, Macomb, and St. Clair counties, with data more precise
than the county seldom provided .3

Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862)32! spent the last summer of his life on his
longest journey, a 3000-mile trip to Minnesota in a vain hope, fostered by his
physicians, that a change of climate would restore his deteriorating health. In May of
1861 Thoreau, accompanied by seventeen-year-old Horace Mann, Jr.,322 son of the
famed educator, traveled by train from Concord to Niagara Falls, Detroit, and (via Ann
Arbor) Chicago, thence west to the Mississippi. A steamer on the river brought them
early on May 26 to St. Paul. For nearly a month they botanized around the Twin
Cities (except for an excursion up the Minnesota River); Thoreau read widely in
libraries—but his health showed no sustained improvement. On June 23 they headed
for home, via Milwaukee, where they spent the night of June 27 but made no botanical
notes. The ship from Milwaukee paused long enough at Carp River [Leland, Michigan]
for Thoreau to note a few plants including a “borraginaceous plant with 4 prickly
nutlets & small flowers blue or rose, either color, stamens or [on?] corolla erect. What
is it?” They stopped at the Fox and Beaver Islands and arrived June 20 at Mackinac
Island.

Thoreau and Mann stayed on Mackinac Island until the evening of July 4, when
they sailed for Goderich, Ontario, whence they returned by train to Concord, arriving
July 10. Thoreau made only one brief trip beyond Concord before his death the
following May, and never had a chance to write up his chaotic notes, which were
published in 1962 by Harding. They include various lists of plants, especially from the
Twin Cities area of Minnesota and from Mackinac Island. These are of interest as a
record of what species, especially introduced ones, were obvious at the time. In
Minnesota, Michigan, Ontario, and New York, Thoreau at least five times noted an
unknown small-flowered boraginaceous plant, which obviously challenged him. At
Mackinac Island, for instance, he wrote: “Borraginaceous plant so common in
Minnesota with lanceolate leaves & small blue flowers, prickly nutlets, common here &
at Carp River.” I have little doubt that this plant was the northern wild comfrey,
Cynoglossum boreale, not distinguished from the larger-flowered more southern C.
virginianum until Fernald described it in 1905. Thoreau’s lungs may have been weak,

20The letters and lists of Stacey’s cited here are at the Beal-Darlington Herbarium, Michigan State
University. According to Howell, Stacey “‘at least one summer did botanical field work with C, F.
Wh acc ie

not ex , if it ever existed; in fact, i s probably the 1900 list sent to Wheeler and on which
ape s tien address of Clarksville ia nies entered in Wheeler’s hand.

321 ft is ardly necessary to offer documentation regarding Thoreau. The Minnesota journey is
covered & ‘Harding (1962; 1965, pp. 445-451).

322Mann, who had been encouraged in his natural history collections by Thoreau, entered Harvard
in the fall of 1861 and studied botany with Asa Gray— oi “first Bostonian of substantial family to
take up the subject professionally” (Dupree 1959, p. 326). Gray encouraged him to visit the
Hawaiian Islands and was grooming Mann to take fhe his classes and his duties as curator of the

curator of botany for the Boston Society of Natural History from 1865 until his death. His
herbarium was bought for Cornell University (Rhodora 3: 256 & 288. 1901).

323Not Mackinaw City, despite the interpolations of Harding. There was no dock or settler at
Mackinaw City, at the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, in 1861—nor until 1870.

there in 1781 from the site of Mackinaw City, which was then abandoned until 1870. Both areas
have been included in the term ‘‘Michilimackinac.”

82

but his eyes were sharp!324 In the early 1850’s he had started giving more serious
attention to natural history and making collections (perhaps influenced by Louis
Agassiz). His herbarium of over 1000 pressed specimens was presented after his death
to the Boston Society of Natural History, whose library he frequently patronized after
being elected a corresponding member in 1850.325 It might also be noted here that
Charles T. Jackson’s brother-in-law, Ralph Waldo Emerson, had urged Jackson in 1847
to include Thoreau as an assistant on his survey of Michigan mineral lands for the U.S.
government. Despite Thoreau’s eagerness for the position, politics decreed other
appointments and so he did not visit the Great Lakes until 14 years later.3

J. Hill (1833—1917),327 clergyman, teacher, and noted Illinois botanist, spent
many of his summer vacations on extended trips, during which he visited northern
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and several places in Michigan, beginning around 1870. A native
of New York state, Hill graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 1863 and then
accepted the pastorate of a Presbyterian church in Homewood, Illinois. For 18 years
before retiring in 1888 because of poor health, he taught at high schools in
northeastern Illinois. One of his excursions northward was to Emmet and Cheboygan

324The oO noted at Mackinac Island by the Agassiz expedition in 1848 (L. Agassiz
1850, p. 23) was probably the same. Norton Miller has kindly looked for me at Thoreau’s
herbarium, now at the Gray Herbarium, and found no Cynoglossum boreale; indeed, there are
apparently n specimens from the Great Lakes trip, after which Thoreau was probably too ill to
prepare or label them (if any were actually collecte

325 See Harding (1965, pp. 268-269; 290) on Thoreau’s botanical collections. See also Paine
(1961), who avers that Thoreau considered himself a botanist as well as a writer after about 1850.
326See Harding (1965, p. 197).

327The most complete account of Hill is by Agnes Chase (1917).

Morong in 1882. (From Haynes in Rhodora 76:
611. 1974.)

. J. Hill (1833-1917).
(From sig hie 1917, facing p. 61.)

83

counties, at the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, in 1878, when,
among other plants, he collected pondweeds along the “inland route” between
Cheboygan and Crooked Lake—the second year that route was open.?28 In 1880, in
Manistee County, Michigan, he collected the type material of a pondweed which was
later named for him, Potamogeton hillii—still considered an uncommon species.329 In
1881 he published botanical notes from numerous places where he had been along the
Lake Michigan shore of Indiana and Michigan, Mackinac, and Sault Ste. Marie. In
1883, he was exploring the Menominee iron region in Michigan and Wisconsin,
“clambering over rocks and fallen timber... making headway through cedar swamps
and thickets, with only a path traced by deer and bear”339 —rugged activity for a man
long afflicted with lameness! His report stressed comparisons between the southern end
of Lake Michigan and the northern region. In 1889, Hill explored the Marquette iron
region in Michigan and the Vermilion Lake region of Minnesota—where Arthur, Bailey,
Upham, and Holway had explored only three years previously and whose report, cited
by Hill in his own account published in 1890, may even have inspired the Illinoian to
visit the region.

328See Voss (1956, pp. 31 & 40).

329See Mich. Bot. 4: 13-14 (1965). The species may now be called “threatened” (Mich. Bot. 16:
105. 1977).

330Hill (1885).

Chapter 9.

TO BRING IT ALL TOGETHER:
CATALOGING THE LOCAL FLORA

Some of the first efforts to list all the plants (at least the vascular plants) of the
states of Wisconsin and Minnesota have already been mentioned in discussing early
work in those states. I. A. Lapham was the author of the first floras of Wisconsin
(1853), Minnesota (1875—but written in 1865), and also Illinois (1857), although the
latter is excluded from the present history. In all these states, most of the area covered
in any statewide flora is beyond the Great Lakes basin and information is not always
sorted geographically in the earliest lists.

The first extensive list for Michigan did not attempt to cover all plants, but was an
original annotated account of nearly 600 indigenous and naturalized species of reputed
medicinal quality, published in 1858. Its author, Frederick Stearns (1831—1907), 33!
had been employed in the drug business in New York and arrived in Detroit on New
Year’s day of 1855, walking across the frozen river from Canada. In April he
established a retail drug store and the next year he added a manufacturing enterprise.
His list of medicinal plants, published only three years after his arrival in Michigan, was
based on information obtained from ‘“‘very many of the medical gentlemen of our
State, who, upon application, cheerfully afforded me the knowledge required.”
Evidently he circularized physicians throughout Michigan, and the resulting list is full
of locally used remedies. Under a juneberry (Amelanchier sanguinea), for instance, we
read:

This beautiful shrubby tree is in full flower in our wet, swampy woods around
Detroit, early in May, before the trees are in leaf, and it t forms a striking and beautiful
d

various nervous affections, in ut uterine diseases, and to assuage the after-pains of labor. The

flowers are exhibited in infusi
Many other interesting observations are in Stearns’ list. Of the wintergreen
(Gaultheria procumbens), he reported: “‘Large quantities of the berries are annually
offered for sale in Detroit, and are simply eaten as a relish.” A frankly unbelievable
figure is given for the red raspberry (Rubus strigosus) at the St. Mary’s River: “A Mr
Church, living upon Sugar Island, in that river, made in the year 1857, over 80,000
pounds of jam and jelly from the fruit he collected in his vicinity; the plants are
plentiful in every portion of the State, of which the fruit, leaves, bark, and roots
possess medicinal value.” It is odd that this list is not cited by any of the later
catalogers of the Michigan flora [N. H. Winchell, Coleman, Palmer, Smith, Wheeler,
Beal]—not even by A. B. Lyons (see chapter 7 above), who unquestionably knew

3310n Frederick Stearns (not to be confused with his son, Frederick Kimball Stearns, nor his
grandson, iene ar Stearns), see Stanley (1907) and Burton (1922, 3: 804-810). There is a
long obituar . 1 of the Detroit News Tribune for January 13, 1907, and an editorial tribute
on p. 4 the on i

84

85

Stearns personally and whose report on medicinal plants in Michigan was presented in
1877,332 nor by Volney M. Spalding, who also presented a paper on native medicinal
plants of Michigan in 1877, to the annual meeting of the Michigan Pharmaceutical
Association where he acknowledged “suggestions kindly given by Ottmar Eberbach, by
Mr. Stearns, and Dr. A. B. Lyons.” (Spalding’s list is essentially unannotated, with at
most very generai statements of abundance and distribution, but he does acknowledge
the work of E. C. Allmendinger and E. Palmer.)

Before leaving Stearns’ pioneering compilation on the local flora, it should be
noted that he was one of the first three curators (Henry Gillman was another) of the
Detroit Scientific Association in 1874. Some specimens collected by him are in the
herbarium of that Association (see chapier 7). In 1881 he disposed of his retail drug
business; the manufacturing operation was incorporated as Frederick Stearns &
Company in 1882-—a large and successful pharmaceutical manufacturer in Detroit.
Stearns was a world traveler and collector in many fields, including conchology; in
1899 he presented to the University of Michigan an extraordinary collection of musical
instruments and in 1901 he was awarded an honorary A.M. degree by the University.

The earliest extensive lists for Michigan not restricted to medicinal plants were,
however, restricted largely or entirely to the Lower Peninsula: those of N. H. Winchell
(1861) and Nathan Coleman (1874). The first list purporting to cover all of Michigan
was a curious 16-page pamphlet published in 1877 by Elmore Palmer (1839—1909), 333
of Dexter, Michigan: “Catalogue of Phaenogamous and Acrogenous Plants Found
Growing Wild in the State of Michigan.” It is a mere list, with no annotations at all
and no statement of its sources except for an acknowledgment of Winchell’s catalog of
1861 and a reference to the author’s “travels throughout the State.” Erwin F. Smith
wrote of Palmer’s list to Miss E. C. Allmendinger: “Have you seen Dr. Palmer’s
Catalogue of Mich. Plants? Quite as remarkable for the ‘commissions as for the
omissions.’ The Dr. writes [apparently to Smith] that he is in active correspondence
with nearly all the leading botanists in the U.S., and has received letters in regard to
his Cat. from every state in the Union except Texas, Georgia, & one other.’

Elmore Palmer was born in Albion, Michigan, December 17, 1839, descended from
Pilgrim stock who had landed in Massachusetts in 1629. He spent his childhood on a
farm, attended what later became Albion College, and began to study the drug business
at the age of 14. At 20, he commenced to read medicine in a physician’s office and
the next year entered the medical department of the University of Michigan. After a
year (1861—1862) he entered military service and in December 1862 passed the Board
of Medical Examiners and was appointed Medical Cadet, U.S.A. Until December of

332Messrs. Nelson and Baker, founders in 1889 of the firm with which Lyons was later associated,

had formerly been in the same business with Stearns, but this could not have inhibited Lyons from

citing Stearns in 1877, which was even before Lyons was associated with Parke, Davis (organized in

1867)—yet another of the prominent Detroit a aaa houses. Their contributions to pure

botany should some day be written up more fully

333Long ac accounts about Elmore Palmer are in Mich. Alumnus 14: 24—25 (1907) and 16: 143-144
fi e Alu

oe as secretary of the class of 1 he time of his death and had attended a
class Aiea te in or as recently as 1907. There is said to be an account of his life, with
photograph, in The pani 1 Odd Fellow of February 15, 1896. Palmer was an active Odd Fellow

and a 2 33rd degree Mason

334 Letter of August 30, 1877, in Allmendinger papers, University of Michigan Herbarium. Smith at
the time was 23, had lived in Michigan for seven years, and had just completed his first year of
high school; but he was already a discriminating student of the local flora

86

1863 he served at hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky. He then re-entered the University
of Michigan and received his M.D. in 1864. He served a year as surgeon with the 29th
Michigan Volunteer Infantry until mustered out September 6, 1865. He practiced his
profession for 13 years in Dexter, Michigan, and also practiced briefly in Kankakee,
Illinois, and in Colorado before moving in 1886 to Buffalo, New York, where he spent
the rest of his life, prominent in medical and fraternal affairs. In 1886 he was a charter
member of the Western New York Medical Society, which he served as president in
1891. He died in Buffalo October 23, 1909. I have found no evidence of any activities
in botany or other branches of natural history except for his Michigan catalog, and can
recall seeing no specimens collected by him.

The first work which attempted to supply an annotated list for the whole state of
Michigan was Wheeler and Smith’s “Michigan Flora,” published in 1881 in the report
of the State Horticultural Society of Michigan, thanks to endorsements by William J.
Beal and his banker friend, Charles W. Garfield, a member of the State Board of
Agriculture and active in horticultural circles. The authors gave due credit to their
predecessors: to the work of John Wright for Douglass Houghton, to Burt and Whitney
and Cooley, to the lists by Winchell and Coleman and Allmendinger and others, to
Daniel Clarke and Henry Gillman and E. J. Hill for specimens or unpublished lists;
they also paid tribute to several others who had “been connected, more or less, with
the botanical interests of the State, either as teachers or collectors,” not all of whom it
has been possible even to mention in the present account, but including O. B. Wheeler
and Rev. D. R. Shoop (as “J. Shaup’’).

The authors of this pioneering flora were, at the time of its publication, self-made
naturalists from Hubbardston, some miles northwest of Lansing. Erwin Frink Smith
(1854—1927)335 moved in 1870 with his parents from near Syracuse, New York, to a
farm his father had bought near Hubbardston. He was already interested in botany and
other branches of science, and pursued these (as well as other) studies diligently
whenever farm chores would permit. Largely self-taught, in 1880 he graduated from
high school in Ionia and spent the summer attending the Agricultural College in East
Lansing. But he could not afford further study, and became a keeper at the Ionia State
Reformatory. From 1882 to 1885 he was employed by the State Board of Health in
Lansing and then, having saved enough money for a year at the University of Michigan,
he continued his formal education, receiving his B.S. with honors in 1886 after a year
of residence. He then began his career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (doing
most of the work for his doctorate, received from Michigan in 1889, in absentia); his
fame as a plant pathologist needs no elaboration here.

Soon after moving to Michigan, Smith began his long friendship with Charles F.
Wheeler (1842—1910),336 who was the village druggist, bookseller, and postmaster in
Hubbardston. Already recognized as the state’s leading ‘‘amateur” botanist, Wheeler
finally gave himself fully to botany and in 1891 received his bachelor’s degree from
the Agricultural College, where he remained on the staff until going to the Department
of Agriculture in 1902. Like Smith, Wheeler was originally a native of New York state,
but he settled in Michigan to regain his health after the Civil War, attending one year

335Rodgers (1952) has given a full biography of Erwin Frink Smith, including some autobio-
graphical material on his early years in Michigan. A short summary is in Jones (1977, pp.
277-279).

336On Charles Fay Wheeler, see Wight (1910); Beal (1910); Voss & Crow (1976, pp. 5—6 et
passim).

87

(1866—67) in the medical department of the University of Michigan. It was natural
that the two promising botanists of the Hubbardston area should collaborate as they
did. With a deadline for copy the next January, Smith began a letter to Elizabeth
Allmendinger May 2, 1880: “Charles & I have begun work on our ‘Flora’ & we wish
you to help us.... We wish to make it as complete & reliable as possible. Prof. Beal
will help us, & if you & Dr. Lyons will also lend a helping hand, there is no reason
why it should not be the best Michigan Flora yet published.”337 Indeed, this first
annotated flora for the entire state did receive wide acclaim. It was the first major
published work of each of its authors, although each had published short notes on
Michigan plants in the Botanical Gazette 1878—1880.

In 1892, a new edition of the “Michigan Flora” was published, in which Wheeler
collaborated with William J. Beal (1833—1924).338 Many new names of collectors
appear among the acknowledgments. Beal, a native of Lenawee County, Michigan,
received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan, where he
was a student of Alexander Winchell’s. A gifted teacher in the best tradition of Asa
Gray and Louis Agassiz, with whom he studied at Harvard, Beal built a strong and
practical program in botany at the Agricultural College, where he went in 1870 as
professor of botany and where he remained for the rest of his professional life. The
Beal Botanic Garden, established in 1873, and the Beal-Darlington Herbarium at what
is now Michigan State University are tangible monuments to his labors there for 40
years. Beal and Wheeler collected at many places around the state, and maintained
contact with many local collectors.

Beal is too well known and too “modern” to require extended discussion here, as

337Letter in Allmendinger papers, University of Michigan Herbarium. Quite possibly similar letters
were sent by Smith or Wheeler to other correspondents in the state.

3380n William James Beal, see Baker & Baker (1925); Voss & Crow (1976, pp. 3—4 et passim);
Jones (1977, pp. 272—274).

Charles F, Wheeler (1842—1910).

88

is another great name in the history of the Agricultural College, Liberty Hyde Bailey
(1858—1954).339 A native of South Haven, Michigan, where he collected plants as
early as the 1870's, Bailey graduated from the College in 1882. His freshman year, he
visited Wheeler and Smith in Hubbardston and he continued to offer them encourage-
ment in their work.349 After serving as a special assistant to Asa Gray at Harvard,
Bailey returned to his alma mater in 1885 as professor of horticulture and landscape
gardening—a highly effective teacher and lecturer as well as a prolific author. He was
also a collector. Among the better known plants of his Michigan days are sets of Carex
exsiccatae, provided with printed labels headed “‘North American Carices.”’ These were
collected soon after he returned to the College to teach. While he was a student, he
had published several short papers, including partial lists of beach and dune plants in
the vicinity of South Haven and comments on ranges of plants in Michigan and
adjacent areas.

3390n Liberty Hyde Bailey, see the book-length treatments by Rodgers (1949) and Dorf (1956);
among much shorter sketches are those by Lawrence (1955) and Voss & Crow (1976, pp. 4—5 et
passim).

340Rodgers (1949, p. 57).

341 Bailey (1880a, 1880b, 1882).

William J. Beal
(1833-1924),
on his 80th
birthday.

89

In 1888 Bailey accepted an offer to go to Cornell University, where his success is
legendary. In the same year, he accepted an invitation from Sereno Watson to revise
e sedge genus Carex—our largest genus of vascular plants in temperate North
America—for the forthcoming sixth edition of Gray’s Manual. In 1888, Bailey and Beal
and Wheeler also engaged in another enterprise, in which they were joined by two
senior students, Lyster H. Dewey (1865—1944) and Daniel A. Pelton (1865—1926)—an
exploring expedition across the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan.342 Lumbering
was in its heyday at the time; railroads were stretching northward (having first reached
the Straits of Mackinac in 1881); stagecoach roads were creeping through the
wilderness. A full and detailed account of this expedition having been published in
1976, it is necessary only to stress here that the two-week trip by covered wagon from
Harrisville to Frankfort, along sandy roads (some of them brand new), was a
productive one for specimens and a major effort to explore the interior of northern
Michigan as transportation by means other than boat (or foot) became feasible.

* KOK OK *K

By the dawn of the 20th century, there were people all over Michigan and
adjacent states interested in plants and making collections, both along the shores and
in the interior. These included students and schoolteachers, clergymen and lawyers,
physicians and bankers, and they often had the encouragement of botanists in the
colleges and universities.543 Beal revised the “Michigan Flora” for the last time in
1904 and noted on the first page of his introduction: “Within the past few years a
delightful department of botany has attracted much attention. It is emphatically
outdoor work and is known as Ecology... While much remained to be done (and
still does) regarding details of the occurrence and distribution of plants in the Great
Lakes region, many additional aspects of botany were coming to the fore after nearly a
century of initial explorations. It has taken several lines of thought, sometimes tangled
or intertwined, for us to survey those explorations and the foundations they laid for
the present century. But in pursuing these various directions, the purpose has been to
share some of the spirit of the pioneer century for the new science of botany in this
portion of the Old Northwest.

342The contemporary newspaper accounts of this expedition, together with information on its
personnel, lists of plants, and comments on the itinerary, are given by Voss & Crow (1976).
343 At least a dozen such institutions which exist to this day were founded in Michigan before
1900 (in fact, before 1890), although, to be sure, some were relatively inactive botanically.

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When they are known to differ from dates on title pages, the actual dates of publication are
given here in accord with the usual practice of botanical bibliographers; title-page dates then fol
in brackets and quotation marks. Not listed below, but cited fully in footnotes, are unp ubli ei
sources and references in ephemeral or general works (e.g., newspapers, Sigenhion cyclopedias,
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been examined by me. No effort has been made to cite 7 hone printings or facsimile reprints
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1 .

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223-—251).]

re a
Oo

air. oe ~~ eit: eee OO

a ,

INDEX OF PERSONS AND INSTITUTIONS

Note: Page references include footnotes and illustrations as well as primary text.

Agassiz, Louis, 34, 39, 41—44, 75-76, 87
Allmendinger, Elizabeth C., 67—69, 79—80, 86—87
American Journal of Science, 7, 29, 73

Arbor Scientific Association, 67—68

Bailey, Liberty Hyde, 38, 88—89
Barnston, George, 42

Barton, Bie Smith, 4—5

Beal, William J., 73, 80-81, 86-89

Bell, John, 60—61

Bell, Robert, 59-61

Bigelow, John M., 56—58, 78

Billings, B., 59

Boston Society of Natural History, 77, 81—82
Botanical Gazette, 73

Bull, George, 22, 24—25

Burt, William A., 19, 25—27, 76, 86

Cabot, J. Elliot, 41—42

Cadillac, [A. de la Mothe], 1—

Canada, Geological and Natural History Survey,
44, 59-61

Cannon, George H., 26

Lewis, 6— . 10— 12, 14-16, 19, 29

Cass,
Charlevoix, [P. F. X.], 2
Cheney, L. S., 29, 33

Clarke, as 62—63, 86

Cole, a J., 66—67, 70

ae eNeua 63-— 64, 85-86

Connor, Leartus, 65

Cooley, Dennis, 19, 26-27, 86

Cowles, H. C., 75

Daneau, Jacques Pierre, Sieur de Muy, 1—2
Davis, Charles A., 71—73

Detroit Academy of Medicine, 65

Detroit Medical College, 57, 64

Detroit Review of Medicine and Pharmacy, 65,67
Detroit Scientific Association, 62, 64—66, 85
Dewey, Lyster H.,

Dodge, Charles K., 69—71

Doty, James Duane, 10—11

Douglas, David, 61,.74—75

Douglass, David Bates, 7, 10—12, 35

Drake, Daniel, 56

99

Drummond, pear 41, 61

Eastwood, John F., 55

Eaton, Amos, 12— 18, 22225
B.

, 13
gelmann, Geore, 56, 58, 75—76, 78
=e Char
Farquhar, sae U., 54
Farwell, Oliver A., 70, 73, 76
Fink, rae 38
Flint, A. R., 56
Flint aes Institute, 62—63
Folwell, Nathan W.,
Folwell, W. W., 35
Foote, Albert E., 58—59
Foote, Lewis, 48—51
Foster, John W., 27, 42, 76
Garden, Alexander, 1
Geological Survey, Canada, 44, 59-61
Geological Survey, Michigan, 22—28, 34—35, 71
Geological Survey, Minnesota, 35—38
Gibson, John,
Gillman, Henry, 47—50, 52, 61-62, 64—65, 69,

8
Goldie, John, 60—61
Grand Rapids Lyceum of Natural History, 63
Grand Rapids Public Museum, 64, 66
Grand Rapids Scientific Club, 63
Gray, Asa, 21-22, 24, 41-42, 47, 55, 73, 78,
81, 87
Greely, Aaron, 4
Greene, Edward L., 33
Hale, Thomas J., 31
Hall, Isaac H., 80
Harrington, sae W., 35, 55, 68
enry, Alexander, 2
Herrick, Clarence Luther, 36—37, 39
Hill, E. J., 82—83, 86
Hollick, Arthur, 74
Holway, E. W. D., 38
Holzer, Lawrence, 78
Holzinger, John M., 37
Hooker, William J., 61
Houghton, Douglass, 15—31, 76, 86
Hubbard, Bela, 19, 26—27
Jackson, Charles T., 26—27, 42, 76, 82
James, Edwin, 14-15, 17, 40
Johnson, Asa E., 39

100

Johnston, George, 15, 18

Jones, Joseph C., 50, 54—56

Jones, Sarah Van Hoosen, 54

Juni, Benedict, 36

Kalm, Peter, 2

Keating, William H., 40

Kent Scientific Institute, 63—64

Kent Scientific Museum,

Kneeland, Samuel, 77

Kumlien, Thure, 33

Lake Survey, U.S., 36, 45—57

Lapham, Increase A., 20, 29—33, 35—36, 57, 84

Lincoln, Almira Hart, 68

Long, Stephen H., 14, 40—41

Loring, Charles G., 41—42

Lyons, A. B., 24, 58, 62, 64—67, 84-85, 87

MacMillan, Conway, 37

Macoun, John, 42, 44—45, 61

Mann, Horace, Jr., 81

Marr, G. A., 51

Martindale, Isaac C., 14, 68

Mason, Stevens T., 10, 21

Michigan Academy of Science, 72—73

Michigan Geological Survey, 22—28, 34—35, 71

Miles, Manly, 62

Milwaukee Public Museum, 32—33

Minnesota Academy of Science, 39, 72

Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey
35—38

Morong, Thomas, 74, 82

Mulliken, W. Earle, 66

Muy, Jacques Pierre Daneau, Sieur de, 1—2

Naturhistorische Verein von Wisconsin, 32—33

Nelson, Baker & Co., 65, 85

Newcombe, Frederick C., 73

Nicolet, Jean, 29

Nuttall, Thomas, 3—5, 10—12, 29, 40—41, 73

Palmer, Elmore, 85—86

Parke, Davis & Co., 65, 71, 76, 85

Pelton, Daniel A., 89

Pieters, A. J.,

Pitcher, Zina,
8

~
w

12-14, 16, 18, 20, 25, 27

Port Huron Academy of Science, 69

,

3

Porter, Thomas C., 59, 74
3

Sager, Abram, 22—24, 34
Sandberg, John H., 37
Sargent, C. S., 67

Schoolcraft, Henry R., 7, 10—12, 14—21, 29, 40
Schweinitz, Lewis, 41

Scovell, J. T., 58

Sheldon, Edmund P., 37—38

Shoop, D. R., 79—80, 86

Silliman, Benjamin, 7, 29, 73

., 66
Spalding, Volney M., 35, 51, 68, 71, 85
Stacey, John W., 80-81
Stearns, Frederick, 84—85
Sullivant, William S., 42
Thoreau, Henry D., 49, 81—82
Todd, C. C., 61
Torrey, John, 7, 10, 13—17, 19-21, 28, 73, 80
Trowbridge, Charles C., 10

Wheeler, Charles F., 72—73, 80-81, 86—89

Wheeler, O. B., 50—56, 58, 66, 86

Whipple, A. W., 56—57

Whitney, J. D., 27, 76

Whitney, W. D., 27—28, 86

Willard, Emma, 68

Winchell, Alexander, 34—35, 46, 62, 69, 87

Winchell, N. H., 34—39, 46—47, 58, 61, 63, 85—86

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Let-
ters, 32, 72

Wisconsin Natural History Association, 31—32

Woolsey, Melancthon,

Wright, John, 22—25, 86

Young Naturalists’ Society, 36

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HERBARIUM

oats from British Honduras
n B. Mains
Notes on ip es from British Honduras
Alexander H. Smi

2.
Studies in the Genus Cortinarius |
Alexander H. Smith

No. 3.
Revision of the American Celastraceae I. Wimmeria, Microtropis,
and Zinow
Cyrus item Lundell
No

. 4.
Studies on Tropical American Plants—I
Cyrus Longworth Lundell

“Studies of North American Agarics—I
Alexander H. Smit
No. 6.
Studies of American Spermatophytes—I
Cyrus Longworth Lundell
No. 7.
Studies of American Spermatophytes—II
Cyrus Longworth Lundell
No. 8.
Flora of Eastern Tabasco and Adjacent Mexican Areas
Cyrus Longworth Lundell
Studies of American Spermatophytes—III
Cyrus Longworth Lundell
Title page and cumulative index, Numbers 1—8
Vol. 9, No. 1.
La Vegetacién de Nueva Galicia
Jerzy Rzedowski & Rogers McVaugh
Vol. 9, No. 2.
Re on the ee of West Indian Marine Algae Particularly
in the Lesser A
Wm. Sue ee
Vol. 9, Nos
Botanical Exploration in Nueva Galicia, Mexico from 1790 to the

Compositarum Mexicanarum Pugillus
Rogers McVaugh

North American Counterparts of 5 iia orientalis (Compositae)
Rogers McVaugh & Christiane Ander

The Genus Trigonospermum Less. (eons dias Heliantheae)
Rogers McVaugh & Chester W. Laskowski

The Oaks (Quercus) Described by Née (1801), and by Humboldt &

Bonpland (1809), with Comments on Related Species
Comelius H. Muller & Rogers McVaugh
Vol. 9, No. 8.
Preliminary Studies on the Dothideales in Temperate North America
argaret E. Barr
Index Volume 9, numbers 1—8. Errata. Title page.

23 May 1939
pp. 5-19

pp. 21-28, pl. I-Il
30 June 1939

pp. 5—42, pl. I-XIl
10 August 1939

pp. 5—46, pl. I-X
1 April 1940

pp. 3-32
12 February 1941

pp. 5—73, pl. I-XXXII
1 September 1941

pp. 3-66
25 May 1942

pp. 3-56
30 September 1942

pp. 5—74, pl. I-IV, map

pp. 75-88
1966
30 September 1966

pp. 1—123, map
1 December 1969

pp. 127—203

30 March 1972
pp. 207—357, map
pp. 361—484

pp. 487—493

pp. 497-506

pp. 509-522

31 August 1972

pp. 525-638
pp. 639-664

Vol. 10. 18 September 1973; corrected printing 10 January 1974

Mosses of the Great Lakes Forest
Howard Crum

a B.: A revised edition was independently published in 1976.]

Vol. 11,
New ae pceuaaees Mexican Umbelliferae
Mildred E. Mathias & Lincoln Constance
Vol. 11, ee
rrasniie Section Chordales in the Northeastern United States

am
The Taxonomy of Acmanthera (Malpighiaceae)
William R. Anderson
Notes on sta baci from South-central Brazil
William R. Anderson & Bronwen Gates

Mexican Species of se mail ie Hitherto Confused
L&

with P. tripinnata Mar I.
Rogers McVaugh & T. piece Mellicha

mp
Rediscovery of Lobelia dielsiana Wimmer, and a Related Species New to Science

Rogers McVaugh & Michael J. Huft

Antiphytum parryi (Boraginaceae) Confused with Heliotropium limbatum

Rogers McVaugh & Audrey S. Delcourt
A Pelagic Sargassum from the Western Atlantic

A New Species of Halimeda from Malaysia
Wm. dolph Taylor

Notes on the Distribution of Sphagnum tenellum
Howard Crum
Comments on Sphagnum capillaceum
oward Crum
Belonia americana, Scoliocarpon pupula, and Robergea
Richard C. Harris
Vol. 11, No. 3.
Botanical Results of the Sessé & Mocifio Expedition (1787—1803)
I. Summary of Excursions and Travels
Rogers McVaugh
Vol. 11, No. 4.
A grcianae — of the Luzulae Group of Cyperus
Meli PF,

Vol. 12, Part I, No. 3
Flora Novas [ Fagaceae }
Rogers McVau
Vol. 13.

Botanical Beachcombers and Explorers: Pioneers of the 19th Century

in the Upper Great Lakes
Edward G. Voss

pp. 1-404

7 November 1973

pp. 1-24

1 August 1975

pp. 25—40
pp. 41—50

pp. 51—55

pp. 57-63
pp. 65-68
pp. 69-71
pp. 73-75
pp. 77-79
pp. 81-83
pp. 85—87
pp. 89-93

pp. 95—96

1 August 1977

pp. 97-195

pp. 197-271
12 March 1974

pp. 1—93

pp. 1—100

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