William Baldwin (March 29, 1779 – September 1, 1819) was an American physician and botanist who is today remembered for his significant contributions to botanical studies, especially Cyperaceae.Howard Atwood Kelly. 1914. Some American Medical Botanists Commemorated in our Botanical Nomenclature: pages 104-112. The Southworth Company, Publishers: Troy, NY, USA. (see External links below)Makers of American Botany, Harry Baker Humphrey, Ronald Press Company, Library of Congress Card Number 61-18435 He lived in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia, and served as a ship's surgeon on two voyages overseas.John William Harshberger. 1899. The Botanists of Philadelphia and Their Work: pages 119-125. T.C. Davis and Sons: Philadelphia, PA, USA. (see External links below). He published only two scientific papers,Clark A. Elliott. 1979. Biographical Dictionary of American Science: page 22. Greenwood Press: Westport, CT, USA; London, England. but his major contributions were in the knowledge that he imparted to other botanists in his letters to them and in the thousands of specimens that he provided for their herbaria.Harry Baker Humphrey. 1961. Makers of North American Botany: pages 15,16. The Ronald Press Company: New York, NY, USA. He wrote letters to Henry Muhlenberg, Stephen Elliott, William Darlington, Zaccheus Collins, and others. His most important collections were from Georgia, Florida, and eastern South America. When he died, he left a large herbarium that proved to be of great value, especially to Lewis David von Schweinitz, John Torrey, and Asa Gray.Ronald L. Stuckey. 1971. "The first public auction of an American herbarium including an account of the fate of the Baldwin, Collins, and Rafinesque herbaria". Taxon 20(4):443-459. He had a special interest in the plant family CyperaceaeJoseph A. Ewan. 1969. A Short History of Botany in the United States. Hafner Publishing Company: New York, NY, USA; London, England. and his incomplete, unpublished manuscripts were a major source for monographs by John Torrey and Asa Gray.John Torrey. 1836. "Monograph of North American Cyperaceae". Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York 3:239-448.Asa Gray. 1835. "A monograph of the North American species of Rhynchospora". Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York 3:191-219. The historian Joseph Ewan has said that "Baldwin's treatment of a number of genera, especially in the Cyperaceae, showed penetrating observation, understanding, and diagnosis". The genus Balduina was named for him by Thomas Nuttall.Thomas Nuttall. 1818. The Genera of North American Plants and a Catalogue of the Species to the Year 1817 vol.2 page 175. D. Heartt: Philadelphia, PA, USA. (see External links below).
Pennsylvania William Baldwin was born in Newlin Township, Pennsylvania,William Baldwin Personal Papers At: Website of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library At: Website of New York Botanical Garden. (see External links below). a small township about one kilometer southeast of Embreeville in Chester County. He was the son of Elizabeth Baldwin (nee Garretson) and Thomas Baldwin, a Quaker minister. He suffered from poor health all of his life because of chronic tuberculosis, and like the rest of his family, he would die of it.William Darlington. 1843. Reliquiae Baldwinianae Kimber and Sharpless: Philadelphia, PA, USA. facsimile edition with introduction by Joseph Ewan. 1969. Hafner Publishing Company: New York, NY, USA; London, England. At the time, his condition was called hereditary tuberculosis, but it is now known that tuberculosis is an infectious disease.William Baldwin Personal Papers At: Gray Herbarium Archives At: Harvard University Herbarium. (see External links below).
William Baldwin had little formal education, but he had a thirst for knowledge and became a school teacher at a young age. When he was not teaching class, he was in Downingtown, Chester County, studying medicine under Dr. William A. Todd. It was here that he met Moses Marshall, the nephew of botanist Humphry Marshall. He sometimes went with Moses Marshall to Marshallton in Chester County to study the botanic garden that his uncle had established there. Thus began the young Baldwin's lifelong enthusiasm for botany In 1802, he took one course in medicine at the University of Tennessee, but soon ran out of money, and returned to his studies under Dr. Todd.
It was near the end of 1802 when he began his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. One of his teachers, Benjamin Smith Barton, encouraged his study of botany and taught him much on the subject. Barton occasionally took Baldwin and other students on botanical excursions into the countryside. In particular Barton's classes studied at the botanic collections at Bartram's Garden under William Bartram and at William Hamilton's garden The Woodlands in Philadelphia.
While Baldwin was attending the university, one of his friends and fellow students, William Darlington developed a serious illness. Baldwin devoted much time and effort to assisting his recovery. Thus began a close and lifelong friendship. After one course at the University of Pennsylvania, Baldwin again fell short financially, and in 1803 returned to Dr. Todd to work as his assistant.
In 1805, he secured a position as a surgeon on a ship, and sailed to Antwerp, then to Guangzhou, and returned to Philadelphia in 1806. During this voyage, he earned enough money to complete his studies. He returned to the University of Pennsylvania and was awarded the degree of M.D. in April 1807.
Delaware Before the end of 1807, he had moved to Wilmington, Delaware and married Hannah Webster, a young lady who had far more education than most women of her time. They would eventually have four daughters.Page 324 In: William Darlington. 1843. Reliquiae Baldwinianae Kimber and Sharpless: Philadelphia, PA, USA. facsimile edition with introduction by Joseph Ewan. 1969. Hafner Publishing Company: New York, NY, USA; London, England.
Baldwin and his wife considered themselves to be devout Quakers, but they were thrown out of meeting for getting married by a Presbyterian minister whom the Quakers called a mere "hireling". Baldwin apologized for this and was reinstated.
During his time in Wilmington, he lived by the practice of medicine and spent his leisure hours in botany. In January 1811, he received a letter from Henry Muhlenberg which began as follows:
Thus began an enduring friendship and a correspondence that eventually consisted of 90 letters, continuing to the death of Muhlenberg in 1815.
Georgia In Wilmington, Baldwin's health continued to deteriorate, and in the autumn of 1811, he moved to Georgia to avoid the severity of the northern winters. In January 1812, he visited Stephen Elliott at his plantation in South Carolina. Baldwin sent Elliott many specimens in the following years, and also some descriptions, which Elliott included in his book A Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia, giving Baldwin full credit for having written them.
The War of 1812 began on June 18 of that year with the declaration of war by the U.S. Congress, and soon thereafter, Baldwin joined the navy as a surgeon. For this, he was thrown out of meeting for the second time by the Quakers. He protested that he had gone to war "not to make wounds, but to heal them", but his membership was never restored in spite of his determined efforts to regain it.
Baldwin's military service lasted nearly 4½ years, from the summer of 1812 to the autumn of 1816. He spent the first 2½ years of his service at St. Marys, Georgia, a small settlement at the mouth of the St. Marys River. The next two years were spent in Savannah. While he lived in Georgia, he sometimes took long journeys on foot, traveling deep into territory occupied by the Creek Indians. He was well received by the natives, and he, in turn, was deeply sympathetic toward them. In his biographical sketch of Baldwin, Darlington writes:
When Baldwin left the navy near the end of 1816, he sent his family back to Wilmington. In the winter of 1816 to 1817 through the spring of 1817, he continued to live in Georgia, making frequent botanical excursions there and in what would soon become the state of Florida. At that time, many Americans called it East Florida.
He returned to Wilmington in 1817 in spite of concerns about his health. In August of that year, while passing through Philadelphia, he met Zaccheus Collins and they became fast friends.
In 1817, President James Monroe selected Caesar Augustus Rodney, John Graham, and Theodorick Bland, as commissioners for a special diplomatic mission to South America, the South American Commission of 1817-1818. Because of his reputation as a botanist, Baldwin was selected to sail on the frigate USS Congress as a botanical investigator as well as the ship's surgeon. He embarked late in 1817 and returned to Wilmington in July 1818. During its voyage, Congress stopped at the ports of Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Maldonado, San Salvador, Brazil, and Margarita Island, Venezuela. During these stops, Baldwin found plenty of opportunity to collect plants that he would press and dry for later study.
After Baldwin returned to Wilmington in July 1818, he planned to study the large collection of plants that he had accumulated, and he began to prepare manuscripts for publication. He exchanged letters with Zaccheus Collins and William Darlington on Cyperus, Scirpus, and Rhynchospora, members of the family Cyperaceae that he was preparing a treatment of. He wrote to Darlington that "It will not do to hurry - there has been too much hurrying among our botanists."
But his plans were not to be fulfilled. The U.S. government was preparing an expedition, to be led by Major Stephen Long, to explore the upper reaches of the Missouri River. William Darlington and John Eatton Le Conte recommended Baldwin as the botanist for this mission and urged him to go.
Missouri Baldwin dropped his work on the grasses Panicum and Paspalum to accept the appointment as botanist on Major Long's expedition. In March 1819, he traveled to Pittsburgh to join other members of the expedition. There were delays in Pittsburgh, and departure did not occur until May 5.
Baldwin believed that travel would sustain his health, but might have had premonitions of his fate. Soon after he started down the Ohio River, He wrote to Darlington:
In another letter to Darlington, he described the condition of the boat.
A stop was made in Cincinnati for a whole week, partly for repairs, and partly because of the alarming condition of Dr. Baldwin. The expedition reached Franklin, Missouri, a small town across the river from Boonville in mid-July where Baldwin resigned from the expedition to convalesce in the home of John J. Lowry.
The following October, William Darlington received a letter from John J. Lowry, which began as follows:
William Baldwin was among the first of about 100 members of Major Long's expedition to die of disease and deprivation. When word of this reached the U.S. Congress, they immediately declared the expedition a failure and terminated its funding.James L. Reveal. 1992. Gentle Conquest: page 112. Starwood Publishing, Inc. Washington, DC. Thus ended the ill-fated venture which claimed the life of one of America's greatest botanists.
Baldwin was 40 years and 5 months of age at the time of his death. He was buried on the banks of the Missouri River. At the end of his biographical sketch of Baldwin, Darlington, in 1843, wrote:
In January 1844, Lowry wrote to Darlington to tell him that the grave of his friend had been washed away by the floodwaters of the Missouri.
Papers Many of Baldwin's personal papers have been preserved. Some of these are in the Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden. Others are in the Asa Gray Archive at the Harvard University Herbarium.