Background
He was born in 1650 at Twigworth, Gloucestershire, England, the son of John Bannister.
clergyman naturalist scientist
He was born in 1650 at Twigworth, Gloucestershire, England, the son of John Bannister.
He graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford (B. A. 1671; M. A. 1674).
He served several years as clerk and chaplain; visited the West Indies, presumably as a Church of England missionary; and by 1678 settled in Charles City County, Virginia, where he devoted himself largely to scientific pursuits. Subsequently he patented land on the Appomattox River and officiated as minister for what was later Bristol Parish. In 1688 he married "a young widow. " During his residence in Virginia he studied minutely the plant life of the region; corresponded with such scientists as Ray, Compton, Sloane, Bobart, and Martin Lister, whom he furnished with specimens or drawings of local flora and fauna; and worked at a "Natural History of Virginia, " which his premature death terminated. His botanical and entomological articles, some of which appeared posthumously in the Philosophical Transactions, include his catalogues of Virginia plants, published in Ray's Historia Plantarum and Petiver's Memoirs; Observations on the Natural Productions of Jamaica; Curiosities of Virginia; Observations on the Musca lupus; On Several Sorts of Snails; The Insects of Virginia; and A Description of the Snakeroot, Pistolochia, or Serpentaria Virginiania.
Without being a scientist of major importance, Banister enjoyed considerable reputation with his fellows. The Virginia Council nominated him as an original trustee of William and Mary College; Ray labelled him "eruditissimus vir et consummatissimus botanicus"; Lister termed him "a very learned and sagacious naturalist"; the historian Campbell ranks him with John Bartram.
He is commonly stated to have been killed, while on a botanical expedition along the Roanoke River, by falling from a bluff, but it now appears that he was accidentally shot by a companion. His papers were transmitted to Bishop Compton; his herbarium was left to Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection formed the nucleus of the British Museum.
Quotes from others about the person
John Lawson in his New Voyage to Carolina saluted Banister's memory in 1709, as "the greatest Virtuoso we ever had on this Continent".
In 1688 he married "a young widow. "
