Alvan Wentworth Chapman

Background

Chapman was born on September 28, 1809, in Southampton, Massachusetts, the youngest of five children of Paul Chapman, a tanner, and Ruth Pomeroy Chapman.

Education

Chapman graduated Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College in 1830. The place and date of his M.D. degree are obscure, but the University of Louisville awarded him an honorary M.D. in 1846, and the University of North Carolina an LL.D. in 1886.

Career

Chapman arrived in Savannah, Georgia, in May 1831 and became a tutor on nearby Whitemarsh Island. He moved to Georgia and then Florida where he held various teaching positions. While president of an academy at Washington, Georgia, he studied medicine under Albert Reese from 1833 until 1835, when he moved to Quincy, Florida; in 1847 he moved to Apalachicola.

Chapman botanized on the Apalachicola River in 1837 with Hardy Bryan Croom, discoverer of the endemic gymnosperm Torreya. The manuscripts left unfinished at Groom’s accidental death led Chapman to redouble his botanical activities. His first botanical publication (1845) was a list of plants growing in the vicinity of Quincy. During the Civil War, Chapman was a “Union man”; his wife was a secessionist. She lived in Marianna, Florida, while he extended aid to runaway slaves and refugees. During guerrilla raids he hid in Trinity Church. Being the only surgeon in town undoubtedly saved him.

Chapman’s Flora appeared without his knowledge, Torrey having read proof. It was 1878 before he could publish species he had overlooked. He also assembled three herbaria. In 1875 Asa Gray spent a week with this “excellent, loyal man all through.” Chapman brought out a second edition in 1884, and a third edition in 1897.

Achievements

• Chapman is cosidered to be a leader in the fields of hierarchy theory, systems theory, and complexity. His Flora of the Southern United States (1860) faithfully carried forward Torrey and Gray’s plan for a comprehensive flora of the nation.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Flora of the southern United States 1883

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Handsome and blue-eyed. Chapman stood over six feet tall and was “even a bit of a dandy.” Although increasingly deaf in later years, he wrote with a clear, strong hand to the end.

Connections

In November 1839, Chapman married Mary Ann Simmons Hancock, who died in 1879. Their daughter, Ruth, died in infancy.

Father:

Paul Chapman

Mother:

Ruth Pomeroy

Spouse:

Mary Ann Simmons Hancock

References

• Asa Gray: American Botanist, Friend of Darwin The leading American botanist of the nineteenth century, Asa Gray helped organize the main generalizations of the science of plant geography. The manual of botany that carries his name is still in use today.
  1988
• One Hundred and One Botanists A great collection of the lives of important botanists throughout time, this book is part biography and part vignette.
  1994
• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 3
  1971