William Marbury Carpenter
Born(1811-06-25)25 June 1811
Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, US
Died4 October 1848(1848-10-04) (aged 37)
New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipU.S.A.
EducationU.S. Military Academy, 1829-1831, University of Louisiana Medical College, M.D., 1836
Years active1838–1848
Known forPhysician, Naturalist and Professor
Parent(s)James and Ann S. (Marbury) Carpenter[1]

Dr. William Marbury Carpenter (25 June 1811, Feliciana Parish, Louisiana – 4 October 1848), a noted Southern natural scientist.[2][3]

Education

He was educated through private tutoring and attended the U.S. Military Academy, in West Point, New York (Class of 1833),[4] but resigned his appointment due to ill health.[5] He then studied medicine at the Medical College of Louisiana, graduating a Doctor of Medicine in 1836.[5]

Physician and Naturalist

He went into medical practice at Jackson, East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana and continued to pursue an interest in the natural sciences. In 1838, he published a study of a submerged forest he discovered near Port Hudson, East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana.[5] In 1842, he was a professor of "materia medica" at the University of Louisiana,[6][7] where he was appointed dean in 1845. In 1844, he published a study on the habit of dirt eating among Negro slaves, and he published several other significant studies.[5][8] He was a leading proponent of research into disease transportability and transmission as related to importation of disease and outbreak of epidemics.[9][10] He joined the faculty of the Medical College of Louisiana as Professor of Botany and Geology, and from 1845-1846 he was Dean of the Tulane University School of Medicine. From 1846 through 1848, he was editor of the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal.[5] In early 1846, he met Sir Charles Lyell, who said of him: "His knowledge of botany and geology, as well as his amiable manners, made him a most useful and agreeable companion".[11] His botanical collections were published posthumously and several plants were named in his honor, including the rare flowering California Bush Anemone, Carpenteria californica, which was "named in honour of Professor William M. Carpenter (1811-48), a physician from Louisiana, by its discoverer, Major General John Charles Fremont, who collected it on one of his four journeys of exploration in the extreme west of the United States between 1842 and 1848."[12] Carpenter's Groundcherry (Physalis carpenteri Riddell, 1853 ex Rydberg, 1896), a plant in the nightshade family indigenous to Louisiana,[13] and Carpenter's Oak, Quercus carpenteri Riddell, 1853, also indigenous to Louisiana,[14] were named in his honor by fellow naturalist John Leonard Riddell.

Personal

William Marbury Carpenter was descended from the New England Rehoboth Carpenter family.[15] He married first on November 21, 1837 in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana to Matilda King, who was born in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana in 1818 and died in 1848, eldest child of Valentine and Nancy (King) King, and second to Eliza King, who was born in 1826 and died in 1863, sister of Matilda. By his first wife, Dr. Carpenter had four children.

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Lt. Col. Patrick G. Wardell. 2002. Genealogical Data from United States Military Academy Application Papers 1805-1866, Volume 1, Heritage Books, Inc., Bowie, Md., p. 167.
  2. ↑ Glenn R. Conrad (ed.). 1988. A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. I, A to M, The Louisiana Historical Association, New Orleans, La., pp. 153-154.
  3. ↑ Stanley Clisby Arthur. 1935. The Story of the West Florida Rebellion, originally published by the St. Francisville, La., Democrat newspaper, and reprinted in 2001 by the Pioneer Publishing Co., Carrollton, Miss., pp. 17-18.
  4. ↑ Wardell, p. 167.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Conrad, pp. 153-154.
  6. ↑ A Brief History of the Tulane Herbarium, http://www.tulane.edu/~darwin/Herbarium/Herbarium/Herbarium%20History.htm
  7. ↑ R. S. Cocks. 1914. "William M. Carpenter: A Pioneer Scientist of Louisiana" in Tulane Graduates' Magazine, vol. 3, pp. 122-127.
  8. ↑ William M. Carpenter. 1846. "Remarks on some fossil bones recently brought to New Orleans from Tennessee and from Texas" in American Journal of Science (2) 1: 244-250.
  9. ↑ W. M. Carpenter. 1844. "Sketches from the History of Yellow Fever; Showing Its Origin; Together with Facts and Circumstances Disproving Its Domestic Origin and Demonstrating Its Transmissibility", by W. M. Carpenter, A.M., M.D., Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, in the Medical College of Louisiana; Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, etc., printed by J. B. Steel, No. 14 Camp Street, 1844, 64 pp., cited in Florence M. Jumonville. 1989. Bibliography of New Orleans Imprints 1764-1864, The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, La., p. 293.
  10. ↑ John R. Pierce and Jim Writer. 2005. Yellow Jack, How Yellow Fever Ravaged America and Walter Reed Discovered Its Deadly Secrets, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, N.J., p. 53, citing Yellow Fever and The South by Margaret Humphreys, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J., 1992, p. 21, which quotes one of Dr. Carpenter's medical writings produced when he was a professor of the Louisiana Medical College, although mistakenly citing his name as "Wesley" M. Carpenter.
  11. ↑ Katharine M. Jones. 1957. The Plantation South, The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., Indianapolis, Ind., pp. 307, 309, 311.
  12. ↑ National Museums & Galleries of Northern Ireland: "Carpenteria californica" in North American Plants in Northern Ireland, http://www.habitas.org.uk/gardenflora/carpenteria.htm, 2003.
  13. ↑ John L. Riddell. 1853. "New and hitherto unpublished plants of the Southwest, mostly indigenous in Louisiana" in New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 9: 609-618, cited in Per Axel Rydberg. 1896. "The North American species of Physalis and related genera" in Memoirs of the Torrey Botanical Club 4: 297-374.
  14. ↑ Riddell, 1853, op. cit., p. 613: "Collector: W. M. Carpenter", "Plants of L[ouisian]a. No. 1552", Locality: "prairies of Feliciana" -- now a junior synonym of Quercus pagoda Rafinesque, 1838.
  15. ↑ Terry L. Carpenter. 1984. "Richard Carpenter, Pioneer Merchant of British West Florida and the Natchez District of Spanish West Florida" in The National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 1, March 1984, pp. 51-62.
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