Edmund Ravenel was born on December 8, 1797 in Charleston, South Carolina, he was the sixth child of Daniel and Catherine (Prioleau) Ravenel of "Wantoot Plantation, " and a descendant of René Ravenel, a French Huguenot, who emigrated to South Carolina in 1685.
He was educated in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1819 he received the degree of M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1823 he began summering on Sullivan's Island, where he collected most of his marine shells, but he also visited Rhode Island and exchanged specimens with naturalists of Europe and America.
In 1824 he was elected by the state medical society professor of chemistry in the first faculty of the Medical College of South Carolina. The faculty had to provide quarters and equipment at their own expense, and Ravenel, after borrowing apparatus from friends, spent $1, 200 in equipping his laboratory.
In April 1832 he was elected corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. His collection numbered 735 species in 1834 when he published his catalogue, said to have been the first in the United States. The next year, when the Medical Society and the college faculty were at odds, his connection with the college was severed, to the regret of the students. He then bought "The Grove, " on Cooper River, a plantation of 3, 364 acres and 104 slaves. Here it is said he entertained Agassiz, Audubon, Bachman, Holbrook, and others, and even drained his rice reserves that they might study animal remains at the bottom. He also collected here terrestrial and fluviatile shells, Eocene fossils, and, from Cainhoy, post-Pliocene specimens.
His drawings and paintings of shells are said to have been beautiful. In 1848 he published Echinidae, recent and fossil of South Carolina. He became vice-president of the Elliott Society of Natural History when it was organized in 1853, and contributed to its Proceedings "Description of Three New Species of Univalves Recent and Fossil"; "The Limestone Springs of St. John's Berkeley"; and "Tellinidae of South Carolina".
In 1859, when his collection numbered about 3, 500 species, he began arranging it by Woodward's plan, but he had only completed univalves when he was halted by cataract of the eyes. Always progressive, Ravenel was interested in machinery and purchased in 1836 patent rights for South Carolina in Sawyer's brick-making machine, and in 1838 similar rights in Brown's machine.
He experimented with fruit growing, purchasing 1, 000 apple trees in 1852. His planting interests were then so extensive that he acquired "Brabant, " "Moreland, " and "Pagett's Landing, " adjoining plantations, which consolidated 7, 615 acres. His letters on the dredging of Maffitt Channel were printed in the Charleston Mercury and Courier, 1857-59.
Several times he was in charge of the Ft. Moultrie hospital. When yellow-fever in 1858 caused a general migration to Sullivan's Island, as intendant of Moultrieville and as physician he did valiant service among the refugees. He was chairman of the political meeting in St. Thomas's Parish, November 10, 1860, which indorsed secession, but he evinced far greater interest in resolutions concerning oyster boats in the Wando.
In the ruin that followed the Civil War he deeded his plantations to his son in trust for the payment of debts, and, almost totally blind, retired to Charleston. In the summer of 1871 he succumbed to typhoid fever and was buried on "Summerton Plantation, " Berkeley County, where no stone yet marks his grave.
The remains of his collection, in memoriam, are in the Charleston Museum.
He is described as slim, and small, with a singularly pure and lovable character.
He was married twice: first to Charlotte, daughter of Timothy Ford, and after her death, to Louisa, her half-sister.
