Dr. Alvan Wentworth Chapman (1809–1899) is probably one of the two best-known citizens of Apalachicola, along with his colleague Dr. John Gorrie. Many know Gorrie as the “father of air conditioning,” and in fact his statue is in the US Capitol. For this reason. He was also the inventor of a device that manufactured synthetic ice. This invention, although not marketed during Gorrie’s lifetime, eventually resulted in other inventions that eventually brought synthetic ice to the South.
Chapman also, in his own way, inventor. During his long and quiet life, while continuing his studies in botany, he was at least as vital an “inventor” because he had taken the study of botany from New England to the expanding United States, especially on the territory of Florida. When scholars of the early 19th century only named plants in New York!The Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, founded in 1812, the country’s first herbal science studies institution, relied on creditors such as Chapman for studies and sample collections. Moving first to the Carolinas and then to territorial Florida, he began collecting and describing plants unknown to his northern colleagues. His mastery of collection has been described as “terra incognita” in the Botanical Gazette.
Unfortunately, there is no definitive biography of Chapman, however, recently published “Florida Explored” through Thomas Peter Bennett (Mercer Press, 2019) covers some of Chapman’s botanical involvement and the state’s many associations with other botanists. Torreya Legacy, offers a review of Chapman’s friendly and professional associations with Hardy Croom (1797–1837, the first Goodwood owner in Tallahassee to die in the sinking of the “Home” shipment) and John Torrey (1796–1873), among many others. Torrey’s call is remembered in the clinical call of the rare cedar, Torreya taxifolia. Torreya, capable of developing only in a small range, can be considered as the cartel plant in the region of the Apalachicola River basin, designated by Conservation International as one of the Chapmans vigorously explored the dominance with these well-known botanists. Chapman consulted the respected Asa Gray (1810–1888) of Harvard, who asked him to prepare his seminal paintings Flora of the Southern United States, first published in 1860.
Bennett quotes Chapman by telling Torrey: “Your city botanists in polished boots that went to your favorite steamships [and] cars have little concept of the silhouette that a Florida botanist cuts into those wild forests.
While Chapman published some articles in the educational journals of his time, his studies are documented in his correspondence with the botanists discussed above as others.
Chapman had great prestige in Apalachicola. At the Botanical Gazette, he said he was “closely related to the public interest of his fellow citizens. “It arrived in 1847 and occupied a space on the corner of Sixth Street and E Avenue. had bought or built the space, records recommended that it belonged to his extended family. Knowledge of the census also suggests that his later years could have been spent elsewhere in Apalachicola. He died in 1899 at the age of 90.
What we’ve all called chapman House Museum for years is its home, meticulously restored in recent years through Helen Tudor. Recent cases have noticed that it was sold to investors in Oxford, Mississippi, who plan to stay to honor Chapmans’ life. and as a public collection space.
In the postwar period, Chapman held various elected and appointed positions in Apalachicola, adding that as a county he issued a judgment and customs collector in the 1860s and 1870s.
On the ground, even in his 80s
Chapman was a tall, thin man, described as tall and elegant; some have described it as distant, but at the same time friendly, in a position to lend books from its vast library to lovers of local botany. An appalachian companion, Winifred Kimball, met Dr. Chapman as a young woman and wrote about her “Reminiscences” in 1921 in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden. to accompany him “on his long escapes through the pine forests and at the back of the marshes of the titi”. He wore the collection box, believing it was his duty as a gentleman. In one account, a label specimen read: “Picked up AWChapman, walking 13 miles for this plant, in its eighty-third year. “
Kimball described his white hair bush as “the kind of white hair that age and white thinking give to a man” and even declared it a little elegant in his dark blue suits. Chapman married Mary Anne Simmons Hancock in 1839, 3 years after the death of her first husband, William J. Hancock, they lived in Jackson County, Two granddaughters from Mary’s first marriage, Katherine “Katy” Wood and Mary Chapman Wood, lived with the couple in Apalachicola and inherited the space after Chapman’s death.
During the Civil War, Mary Chapman, a southern local and consteller of the Confederate cause, moved from Apalachicola to her Marianna estate in Jackson County. Chapman remained in Apalachicola and was known as a supporter of the Union. Chapman in communication with Union lock ships and regarded as a reliable source of data through the Union Navy.
It’s not unexpected that Chapguy called himself “a Union guy” because he was born in Southampton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Amherst College. It also relied heavily on the professional recommendation of Professor Asa Gray, director of the Harvard University herbarium, and regarded as the most eminent botanist of the 19th century.
A separate: to show his prestige in the box of botany, Gray was selected to be one of the botanists of the American exploration expedition (1838-1842). This fabulous, if in the end somewhat dishonorable, traveled with a squadron of wooden sailing boats, mapping and collecting specimens along the shores of the Americas and across the Pacific Ocean. These specimens have become the core of the Smithsonian Institution’s collections. Author Nathanael Philbrick’s book, “Sea of Glory,” recounts the US government’s first foray into the US government. But it’s not the first time An expedition. Unfortunately, his position in history has been tainted by incompetence and even mutiny. Fortunately, Gray withdrew from the expedition before leaving the port.
An intelligence for the EU
As a unionist, Chapman intended to be an intelligent source of data for the Mercedita team and upcoming shipments, which have been located off St George’s Island since 1861. La Mercedita was a ‘steamboat’. A shipping style can be noticed at the Raney House Museum in Apalachicola, through the Historical Society of the Apalachicola Region.
Above the model, on the wall of the Raney House Museum, is the outstanding map entitled “Scott’s Great Snake”. This represented the Union’s effort to block all southern ports, preventing the Confederacy from supporting its war well over the sale of “King Cotton”, the largest export product in the United States at the time.
Union officials “captured” Apalachicola, gathering only city dwellers whose lives had been affected by the blockade and who had meddled in loyalty to the cause of secession. Two vital families, the Raneys and the Ormans, were directly in the aspect of the Confederacy. The circle of relatives is said to have warned Confederates not to come to town by hitting a barrel on their roof when the Union’s military workers’ corps was on the ground. The Raneys’ three sons served in the Confederate aspect, and a war flag, which is still hanging from the Florida History Museum, sewn home through village girls.
The nature of Chapman’s interactions with the Union blockade ships is documented in the “Official Documents of the Union and Confederate Marines”, available in full text and in the “Making of America” library at Cornell University. Chapman is discussed as an eminent citizen and one of the resources displayed by the explosion of the Confederate battleship Chattahoochee in June 1863 (volume 17, page 390).
This documentation is because many accounts of this dissexed border are exaggerations and even falsehoods.
It is also well documented that when Confederate forces arrived in town, Chapman hid overnight at Trinity Episcopal Church, across the street from his home, and told Kimball that his bench had cushions for his comfort.
Kimball writes that, as a physician and unionist, Chapman called for the rescue of Union prisoners who escaped from Andersonville prison, upriver in Georgia. According to Kimball, the infantrymen would use the Flint River, a component of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system, While Kimball tells an engaging story of escaped prisoners of war hiding in the marshes of the Apalachicola River Delta, the online page from the National Historic Site of the Andersonville National Park Service suggests that in fact, very few prisoners escaped and that the adventure far exceeded two hundred kilometers.
The difficulties were a much greater challenge in Apalachicola later in the war. With a population of approximately 500, its citizens struggled to dispense with the materials that used to come from ships entering the port to export cotton. Fresh fish and oysters fortunately supplanted the rich variety of food products imported before the war.
Second edition of the master’s paintings at Orman House
The first edition of Chapman’s masterpiece, Flora of the Southern United States, published just before the war in 1860, is said to have a popular price for students in general and hobbyists, and expands the study of botany outside the northeastern borders. . A momentary edition established in 1883, and a final edition in 1897, two years before his death. Orman House State Park, the chapman Botanical Garden site, presents a copy of the moment edition. In addition, two copies are in the rare book archives in the key library Apalachicola Margaret, which can be used for study purposes.
Chapman’s actual specimens, called “herbarium,” were distributed to educational institutions, adding Harvard and Columbia. Biltmore Estate in North Carolina has also won specimens and a major component of its library.
William Trelease, another botanist, provided other attractive main points in his contribution to one of Chapman’s obituaries. Asa Gray, he said, “saved the plates from destruction during the turbulent periods of war that then began. ” These plates would have been pictorial inclusions in the book, highlighting how the coming war affected the study of botany in Chapman’s life in the southern states.
Trelease also wrote about the patience of the elder botanist who, at more than 80 years old, kept entering the box many miles from his house to collect specimens and had “the pleasure of meeting many ancient plants. “
Finally, Trelease talks about Chapman’s unrest in financing his new edition of “Flora” due to unforeseen bank bankruptcy. He writes that “a friend discovered in this moment of need has done much to relieve the care of his later years. “
Back in Kimball Reminiscences, the botanist’s soul is revealed. She recounted an incident that explores the doctor’s sense of the Almighty. Showing him the spores of a fern, he quotes him by saying, “Here is the hand of the Almighty in this task
Although Winifred Kimball’s account of his friendship with Dr. Chapman is not a documentation of his skill as a botanist, it is invaluable to offer a glimpse into the life of this border doctor and botanical scholar. It even refers to how his medical practice went. it is basically carried out with the use of hot baths and “bread pills”, a 19th-century term for a placebo. Typed copies of his Reminiscences can be obtained from the Margaret Key Appalachian Library (where the writer was a librarian for 8 years and a portion). years) There was an adorable picture of Chapman in his library in demonstration in the library.
Caty Greene is president of the Historical Society of the Appalachia region.