The Correspondence of George W. Clinton (1807–1885) and Jeanne C. Smith Carr (1842–1903) P. M. Eckel Missouri Botanical Ga
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Res Botanica Technical Report 2019-09-08 The Correspondence of George W. Clinton (1807–1885) and Jeanne C. Smith Carr (1842–1903) P. M. Eckel Missouri Botanical Garden 4344 Shaw Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63110 and Research Associate Buffalo Museum of Science September 8, 2019 In January of 1865, Judge George W. Clinton of Buffalo, New York, was busy about his winter routine, writing in his combination day book and botanical journal, archiving or logging his day-to-day activities, contacts and experiences—a volume now archived in the Research Library of the Buffalo Museum of Science. Clinton was a Judge of Buffalo’s Superior Court and member of the Board of Regents presiding over the University of the State of New York and its Education Department. He was President of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, which had been founded only three years previously in 1862. He was also one of the sons of New York State Governor DeWitt Clinton, who had presided over the building of the famous Erie Canal. He was also busy about his correspondence, mailing packages of botanical specimens to his various correspondents in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Michigan, Maine, with “a letter of advice to each.” He had prepared, and perhaps edited, the botanical manuscript of a young and promising friend, John Paine Jr., soon to be published in the Annual Report of the Board of Regents. Clinton left by train from Buffalo for Albany, New York, to attend a Regent’s of the New York State University meeting. He continued his correspondences upon arrival in Albany where he found a letter from Professor Asa Gray “asking me to come in” to visit Gray in Boston. The New York State Herbarium was in the midst of transformation into a collection of national significance. In January Clinton took a train to Boston and on the train chatted about botany and agriculture with a man associated with The Boston Cultivator, a farm journal. In Boston, he was directed to a streetcar stop, thence to Old Cambridge Station and, after a walk of 3/4 mile, reached Gray’s house on Garden Street. The next day was Sunday: Clinton went to the Episcopal Church and no work was performed in the Gray household. “Like a true man, he has family prayer in the morning, & says grace” (Clinton’s botanical journal). In addition to visiting Gray’s herbarium, Clinton visited the Boston Society of Natural History, founded in 1830. 2 Returning to Albany a week later, he attended morning worship at St. Peter’s Church, and later the Regent’s Meeting to, among other things, consider “Senator Cornell's offer to endow an Agricultural College &c. at Ithaca, with 300 acres of land & $500,000” (Clinton’s botanical journal). That year, 1865, Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White would found Cornell University. In that same year, Purdue University in Indiana, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Maine and the University of Kentucky would also be founded (Grun 1979). Upon returning to Buffalo, Clinton continued to keep a brisk correspondence with botanists, people with botanical interests, exchange of specimens, and the identification of problem species. In February, Clinton again attended a Regents meeting in Albany concerning complications regarding the Cornell proposition of the earlier month. Upon returning to Buffalo he continued his visits, recommendations, identifications and general correspondence, sending a packet of specimens off to Asa Gray. Then, on March 8, Clinton wrote in his journal: “Mrs. Ezra R. Carr (wife of Prof. Carr) of Madison, Wis. left her card, at my house, in the afternoon, while I was in Court, with this endorsement: "Mrs. Carr introduces herself as a botanical friend of Miss Mary Clark of A. Arbor, Mr. Lapham of Wis., and Col. Jewett, who wishes to make some botanical exchanges with Judge C. Is at Rev. Mr. Smith's, 70 Niagara. Called & had a pleasant chat with the lady.” Jeanne C. Carr 3 The next month, that April, the American Civil War would draw to a close. The Confederate States of America “formally surrender at Appomattox on April 9th.” Five days later, Abraham Lincoln would be assassinated. Jefferson Davis, who had been President of the southern Confederacy, would be captured and imprisoned (Grun 1979). Mary Clark Throughout the ensuing summer, Clinton would botanically scour the bogs and marshes of western New York, the environs of Buffalo, nearby Ontario in Canada, the islands in the Niagara River, Niagara Falls, sending mosses and fungi to his protégé, Charles H. Peck at the State Museum in Albany, New York, and putting up specimens for identification, sorting, and expressing off to his correspondents over the winter of 1866. But Jeanne Carr did not return to Buffalo and never visited Clinton again. Clinton took his role as Regent very seriously. He was very interested in not only the establishment of State or Territorial universities in the United States, but in lending his advice and influence to other regents at these young institutions, many of whom struggled against recalcitrant legislatures and sometimes not so honest individuals who interfered with the integrity of these institutions for political or financial reasons. He was also most interested in assisting young or established Natural History Societies in the larger cities of the United States and Canada. Clinton used his exchanges and personal botanical collections to help found teaching herbaria, as, for example, he did with the young Purdue University (Eckel & Harby 2011). Doubtless Clinton was interested in meeting Jeanne, due to her endorsement by (her husband) Ezra Carr, 4 who was, in 1865, the Chair of Natural Sciences of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, involved with the Wisconsin state historical society, and member of the State Geological Survey. Clinton’s colleague James Hall was also a distinguished American geologist, later head of the New York State Geological Survey and leader of the process of overhauling the New York State Cabinet of Natural History as its Director. Hall himself was actually the state geologist for Wisconsin in 1857-1860 (Wikipedia “James Hall (paleontologist)” Sept. 2019). Her endorsements, as Clinton noted in his journal, in public support or approval of her claim on Clinton’s attention while in Buffalo, derived from her husband, Ezra S. Carr, as mentioned. The University at Madison had been founded in 1848 in the same year of Wisconsin’s statehood (Wikipedia, “University of Wisconsin—Madison” Sept. 2019). Ezra would be given the Chair of Natural Sciences and to teach a course in agriculture, being the eighth out of eight faculty members. Ezra, like Clinton, would serve as a university regent from 1857–1859 (Wikipedia). Ezra was to abandon his faculty position, however, in 1867, two years after his wife’s visit to Buffalo, when he resigned (Gisel 2001). Ezra Carr After losing his position, the Carr’s “made a trip back east to visit friends and family” (Wikipedia, “Ezra S. Carr” Sept. 2019), and perhaps visit individuals in the eastern past of the State and New England. Jeanne Carr, in May of 1868, “decided to spend the summer in Vermont” (Gisel 2001). Jeanne Carr herself, born in Vermont had attended the Castleton Seminary in Castleton, Rutland Co., Vermont when she was nine years old (in 1834) (Gisel 2001). It is to Castleton that she withdrew after Madison, before the Carrs moved to California. 5 Ezra’s connection to New York State began with his birth in Stephentown, Rensselaer Co., New York, and his education at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, New York. Stephentown, as a postal village in 1860, contained 15 houses (French 1860). There is no record of Ezra Carr being a correspondent to Judge Clinton. A second endorsement for Jeanne Carr came from Increase Allen Lapham (1811-1875), of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was a correspondent of Clinton’s, considered to be an “early pioneer” in Wisconsin, a scientist and scholar, and was born in New York State (Voss 1978). “He served as President of the State Historical Society and State Geologist” (Social Networks and Archival Context, “Increase Allen Lapham” Sept. 2019). Unlike “the transient explorer, passing through the state [of Wisconsin] and plucking plants along the route,” he was a “pillar of Milwaukee, promoting its growth and investing in real estate (Voss 1978). Lapham, who had been born in Palmyra, New York, was 13 years old when he worked on the Erie Canal out of Lockport in western New York State. Increase Lapham It is rather curious that in June, of 1865, after Mrs. Carr’s visit to Buffalo, Clinton received a letter from Lapham, which was a reply to an earlier letter Clinton had sent to him. Apparently Clinton’s earlier letter was one of the few contacts Clinton had made with Lapham, and no subsequent correspondence seems to have occurred. Clinton wrote his botanical journal that on April 19, 1864, Lapham had requested Clinton “to send copies of the circular of the Regents” to him. In the subsequent letter from Lapham, he informed Clinton that, although when younger he had “built up a large herbarium of some 24,000 specimens, both by his own collecting and by his exchanges” (Voss 1978), he no longer could “devote more time to the pursuits of Natural 6 Science, and to respond in a proper manner to all who desire information and specimens from this part of the world” (Lapham letter, June 13th, 1865, archives, Buffalo Museum of Science. The endorsement of “Miss Mary Clark of A. Arbor” [Michigan], however, must have provoked a stronger reaction in Clinton because Clark was an avid correspondent of his. Clark, Miss Mary H. (1813-1875), Ann Arbor (P.O.